Evergreen
by Shoedonym
Summary: CS secret relationship/forbidden love AU. Killian is wrong, she knows he is; they are not cursed. But she also knows he feels trapped between a rock and an even less forgiving place. It was never about her. It was never about whether he loved her enough to fight for them - nothing could be further from the truth. It was about him.
1. Winter

**_Evergreen_**

 _CS secret relationship/forbidden love AU_

 _A/N: It's my favourite trope, I just had to give it a whirl._

"You're sure no one saw you?"

It's a fair enough question to ask, she thinks, what with her back to his chest at the foot of her bed, his hands tucking the hair over her shoulder.

Being seen would null and void the point of him sneaking in here in the first place.

There are so many questions skipping through her mind and yet that's the only one she can think to say, her heart tripping with her thoughts. Tripping and faltering – the way that every thought and feeling coursing through her is a little desperate to find solid ground, a little unsure as to where exactly that might be. And each question is changed with every pound of her heart, with every touch of his lips to the corner of her jaw, the crook of her neck.

So, that's all she manages to ask. Not _'how did you get in?'_ , not _'Killian, you shouldn't be here'_.

The castle is flooded with people – diplomats and their entourages, soldiers and servants from several different kingdoms - and the likelihood that someone saw him in the corridor - in her wing, breaking into her room - is unbearably high. He hadn't even bothered with a heavy cloak like she usually does when she tip-toes across his gangplank. Nothing but his usual cloak and dagger (literally and metaphorically); clad in leather and shadow.

Killian's voice is a deep whisper behind her ear.

"Ye of such little faith, Emma."

Emma makes a noise of objection at that, something high-pitched and indignant. It isn't about faith. She's more concerned with what might happen if they're caught in this particularly compromising position (his breath puffing warmly against her neck as he smoothes his hands down the length of her back).

It comes down to two simple things: if they're caught, he'll be less reckless and she only wants him nearer; if they're caught who knows whether either of them will be safe.

(And if anyone is a little low on faith it's him.)

But despite the worry, despite the possible consequences, she's never been happier to see him in her chambers, little bits of snow still melting in his hair. And Emma's aware of how quickly she's surrendering to this tonight, of how quickly their hellos have turned into an attempt at farewelling their clothes. Almost as though they've never touched before, as though they've never done this (never met secretly in the dark, never undressed one another).

She puts it down to absence, and the things that people say about the fondness of hearts.

It's been weeks since she last saw him.

The winter came quickly, growing unpleasantly colder, settling a permanent chill into each and every flagstone of her floor, something that not even her fire seemed to be able to chase away. And he'd cropped up in her mind time and time again - while forgetting to hold her tongue in the middle of war councils and diplomatic dinners, sitting with her parents in the Great Hall and listening to the squabbling complaints of their people.

Not that it was very hard to think of him.

All it took was a passing mention of the navy, the sea, the pirate problem interfering with the trade in the east, and she thought of him. When she had a particularly good casket of wine, or glass of dark rum, or a piece of meat spiced with something from a far off distance place, she thought of him.

Only he could make her forget just how cold the stones really were beneath the pads of her feet.

Truthfully, she was more surprised than usual to see him standing by the window of her room. The last time he had nearly been caught – by her mother the queen no less, as he hid predictably underneath her bed – and he had left with a kiss to her cheek and the promise that they would meet somewhere safer next time.

Yet, here they were.

Reckless and foolish.

Foolish with their blood roaring into a fire, her forearms and her hands curled around the fourth poster of her four-poster bed. Reckless with his chest pressed against her back, fingers untucking laces.

There are other questions that form in her mind, one after the other - _'I thought we agreed last time that-', 'where have you been?'_ , _'how long do we have?'_ \- but they quickly turn to different thoughts, like the touch of his hands over her waist, the slow nudge of his nose against her turned cheek.

They're less thoughts than they are feelings, really - the quiver of her blood against her cheeks, the urgency she feels right down to her toes; there is heat and want burning around her neck, burning everywhere (burning in the very pit of her stomach).

He is far, _far_ more effective than the fire in the corner. Igniting and igniting, one sparkling ember after another.

Emma moves one hand over her shoulder to furl her fingers through his dark hair. It has grown a little longer in the past few weeks, the ends falling through her fingers a little slower than they had before, and Killian tastes the thrum of her pulse, lips intent upon her neck, humming her name smoothly in response.

Then he pulls again.

He pulls at the lace of her corset a little too tightly and it snags once more, yanking her further into him with a gasp. But before she has time to tease and chastise him for his frustrations, he slows his urgent tugging, his fingers untangling themselves from her laces. One hand travels behind her ear, gathering hair with it as he goes, pulling it from one side of her neck to the other.

"Sorry, love," he mumbles, before pressing a slow kiss just under her ear.

And his lips linger for just a moment, the scruff of his chin light upon her shoulder. He traces it further, running his lips, his nipping teeth, gently over the back of her shoulder. It sends a tremble down her spine, her fingers tightening on the wooden rung of her bed, her heartbeat an entirely lost cause.

Corsets were not made for breathing, let alone the long gasping sort of breathing she's doing now. Then again, corsets were made to be worn, to catch the eyes of others, to flatter the female form – decidedly not to have pirates rip them off in dark rooms of castles.

"This bloody thing has it in for me."

Emma can't help but laugh quietly at his annoyance. He is no novice at this – neither of them are – but for some reason, tonight, he cannot seem to undo them. (Perhaps it is the cold blunting the feeling in his fingertips, perhaps it's the simple need to be with her again making him stumble in his haste.

Perhaps it's just that this green dress is a new dress, one he hasn't had the pleasure of taking off before.)

Whatever the reason, Emma turns around to face him.

 _Killian._

His features are half-shadowed by the dark, but it somehow makes him softer rather than highlighting the sharper edges of his face, His hair an absolute mess from where she's been touching it - he is handsome nonetheless. But more than that it's his smile that does her in, the one he gives her in return for her own, the crinkles that wrinkle along the sides of both eyes –

He looks wrecked, and dazed, and they're both still fully dressed – minus their shoes.

(It's always like this at first, his eyes bright, his cheeks flushed and cheerful - as though he isn't some wanted pirate, as though they aren't reduced to kissing in shadows and meeting in secret.)

"The great Captain Jones, scourge of the seven seas, bested by a corset. I thought you liked a challenge?"

Emma leans closer towards him, bumping her nose with his, intent upon teasing him (both physically and verbally). He takes the bait, chasing her lips - but fails in catching her, or in doing much more than softly grazing with a puff of breath.

Killian's hands are around her hips again, his fingers once again becoming snarled in the chords of her clothes, nose insistently nudging in the dip between her nose and her cheek.

"I just didn't know your laces were going to be more stubborn than you."

She laughs easily against his lips, and it's the opening he's after - Killian wastes no time in kissing her smile.

His impatience is palpable. Lips hot against hers, capturing hers as though he hasn't already kissed her this evening – languid, and deep, and hungry it is, and Emma meets it with a yearning for more. Each chase of her is long and heavy, soft slides of soft lips as his tongue makes torturous swoops against her own, and each touch is desperate for the next, and the next, and the one after that, and -

Emma feels dizzy with it.

And maybe standing on her toes to kiss him is ill-advised when she's feeling off-kilter, but her arms crush him to her anyway, hands winding up to lose themselves in his hair again. But her impatience is as evident as his own, she's ridiculous antsy with it, and her hands begin to slide down, tracing the line where his leather brocaded vest meets the skin of his chest.

His clothes are much easier to discard than her own, buttons popped from their holes without a fight, all scrunched and thrown hastily over his head in between hard kisses. Emma has no idea where the clothes end up, where exactly it is she flings his belt when it clatters to the floor.

But, Killian's kiss becomes a wide toothy grin when he finally manages to get her laces unknotted.

He spins her around again to get a better look at the ties, the whirl as it loosens at his fingers vibrating along her back. Suddenly, the deep green material is gone, and Emma can breathe properly once more as his hands push the tiers of her dress off of her shoulders, down, and over her hips. All hindrances gone, save the shift of her under things.

Killian's warm hands skate over the soft material at her waist, slinking slightly over her stomach and pulling her against his bare chest, the rings upon his fingers a hard contrast to her skin and his. The soft sensation of the short material tickling against her skin is a welcome one as he continues nudging kisses into the crook of her neck, seemingly content to simply touch the shape of her without bone, and silk, and thick linen between them.

But it's not what Emma wants.

She pulls the thing off over her head and turns once again in his arms.

Killian's cheeks are pink and so are his ears in the firelight, and it doesn't make him look like the roguish captain she knows he partly is, but the other softer part that blushes when he's been kissed one too many times. The part that told her she looked stunning when she walked through the door, cutting off his own sentence with a kiss.

(Not that she's much better.

She knows she's red too, her cheeks burn with it.)

Emma traces kisses along his cheeks, small and unchaste as her hands take his, moving them from her hips - softly grazing the backs of his knuckles and his rings across her skin at the same time - to her breasts.

There's a very distinct shiver up her spine that has nothing to do with the cold.

And she feels overwhelmed with the need to touch him in return – her lips hovering gently at the corner of his mouth, stubble bristling against them, all the while her fingers travel from his hands up the muscles of his arms.

"Happy now?" she breathes against his cheek, her breath still out of beat with the skip of her heart.

Killian fingers do not instantly cup her as she half expects from his haste and his mood, he is no more rush to do anything at all. Instead, they trace the underside of her breasts, running barely there skims across the skin, the edge of Killian's fingernails etching gentle rakes around the swell of her chest.

It's worse than if he had a firmer touch. It makes her heart falter when he touches her so teasingly, it makes her limbs forget what they should be doing in favour of paying attention to the actions of his own. There's another accompanying shiver down her spine when his thumbs run over her nipples, pushing them gently and letting them rise again against the winter air.

And maybe it's a sign of how wound up she is, of how much she _missed_ him, of how much she is as desperate as he is, because the simple second drag of his thumbs against the hard of her nipples has her biting teeth marks into her lower lip. Emma's breath hitches against his ear, their faces cheek-to-cheek as his hands widen their quiet teases further across her body.

Killian's cheek smiles against her own.

"Aye, love, very happy."

.

.

(And, so, that's how it starts. Not exactly at the beginning, but somewhere in the middle, each one of them already lost in feeling for the other, and both as helplessly unable to stay away.

But just as importantly, it starts with them lost in a winter of harsh weather and harsher realities; at the juncture of things.

It starts like this: love in the greatest sense, affection at a violent depth.

But not everything blooms in the winter.

Not everything is evergreen.)

.

.

"You don't _have_ to leave, you know."

There is no morning light, no sun to sprinkle warmth on Emma's still bare back. No light, no twinkle of morning.

And partially that has something to do with the season, the winter sun slower to rise and rarely ever rising with anything more than a drowsy chill. Almost every wing of the castle has visitors in it at the moment, and it won't be long before all the maids and hired help begin to shuffle as quietly as they can in the corridors outside. But for now, it's long before the dawn, and her room is freezing, the remnants from the fire having fizzled out hours ago (long after she and Killian had climbed under the covers).

It is dark and it is still.

The chill had been distinctly manageable with Killian's body wrapped soundly against her own, with his hand tucked between her grasp and her chest, the flop of his fringe tickling the back of her ear; snug from ankle to chin.

However, he's not there anymore.

Killian is up and scuffling about her bedroom instead, tugging on his pants and buttoning up his cotton shirt hurriedly, the cold clearly abrasive against the bare of his skin. Emma watches him do it, lying on her stomach, her cheek squashed and no doubt forming creases with her pillow. She blinks at him, the red of his vest the same sort of maroon as the pattern of her bedding, and she knows for a fact that his eyes would match the blue of the tapestry that hangs on the wall.

And her heart sinks into the hollow of her stomach with every item of clothing he puts back on – his vest, his pants, his shoes.

Several of her questions from only hours ago find explanations she doesn't like the taste of – he's not staying, he can't, there are rumours of a dagger he is chasing and he is only a day behind them. He risked sneaking in because he was desperate to see her in the small gap of time that he had, while his men loaded up his ship with more supplies.

(Reckless and foolish.)

"All I need is for a maid to see me when they come to relight your fire, and all the sneaking around will be for naught."

Just once she wants to feel that sun on her back, the heat of him combined with the heat of the dawn, to wake themselves with thawing touches, to nestle her nose into his bristly chin to stifle her yawns.

But instead she returns his explanation with an almost sulky bite.

"Fine."

She'd be more surprised if he didn't notice the irritation in her tone, the clipped word sour in the air. Killian moves from his perch on the edge of her bed, ignoring the laces of his boots he was fiddling with to lean over to her, the bed dipping in turn.

He lies down, her legs tucked under his, the blankets of the bed in the middle of them as Killian shuffles to meet her eye-to-eye. There are hardly any inches between them as he tugs himself closer, his hair falling in his eyes a little as the backs of his fingers run along the exposure of her shoulders.

"I'm sorry, Swan."

"No, you're not."

Where Killian truly does sound apologetic, Emma only sounds a little petulant. She's not trying very hard this morning to make it easier on either of them.

"I am sorry, but less sorry if it keeps you alive," he sighs heavily, clearly not willing to revisit their bone of contention.

"You're so melodramatic," she teases him for it, but neither of them smile. It's not really that kind of a tease. It is instead a kind of empty quip, the words that she knows under a different sort of morning light would hold a lot more laughter to them. Emma's heart is in no mood to smile, too sore and tired, too heartbroken that they have to do this every single time.

(It always starts so well.

And always ends like this.

The good moments followed by the bad.)

Emma pulls one hand out from its curled place under her chin, letting it fall to his scruffy face. Gently, she thumbs at the place where she wishes a dimple would creep, but it doesn't. His fingertips trace soft lines on her back, the nails a soothing sort of scratch, his eyes dark in the dim with something bittersweet - but he does not smile.

(Not even the smile he makes when he's trying to be brave - when he's trying to pretend he's alright - makes a reluctant appearance.)

Emma knows how their secret meetings would look if anyone ever actually knew what was going on.

A scandalous pirate seducing a princess into bed, the two of them in passionate throes until he sneaks away under the still cover of night. No doubt they would assume he is taking advantage and leaving her broken-hearted. He doesn't have the greatest reputation - even for a pirate - he is one with more stories attached to him than most, and more than a few of those involve a woman of some sort – married or otherwise, royal or common.

She's heard them all. Heard that women simper all over him at the sight of his smile, that he's snuck past the watchful eyes of parents and husbands, with his belt still unbuckled, and the things stolen off shelves in his pockets. Emma knows the light she would be painted in, the way she would be reduced to base facts like the other women.

Others would see her as a conquest, as just another story in his repertoire.

But Emma is not those people.

She knows with him which bits are true and which aren't, knows he amps up the stories intentionally with his own bravado. He does leave her broken-hearted, but he also leaves with his own in splintered pieces in his chest, fragments that prick and sting when he goes, when he breathes.

The look in his eyes never lies.

He wants to see her in the hazy light of the morning too, to take her hands in his as their bodies sweat and flush against each other, with lazy limbs and lazier lips. To walk with her in the city streets without fear that someone might see his fingers clasping hers. He wants to walk with her through the halls of her castle, following her to her council meetings, rather than hearing about it afterwards in the dark whisper of some room.

Instead, they lie there in the quiet limbo between night and day, waiting for one of them to leave.

"I love you."

Emma whispers it first, the words feeling as heavy as her heart, and not because the words are a burden: the words are heavy because she means them too much. They come out from the lurch in her stomach that fears she will never see him again, that this morning when he leaves for another perilous gambit, he might not make it back.

His eyes still soften every time she says them. They soften as if he knows the twofold meaning behind her confession, and why it is she only says it when he's leaving.

(His eyes never lie.)

"I love you, too. More than anything – that's why I have to do this."

There's a little wisp to his 'why', his accent pushing the w and the h together in a tiny puff. Normally, she likes the sound, normally the sound is gentle and somehow wistful, a reminder of the distance he's travelled to get here. But she never likes it when he's saying goodbye.

Something which he seems to do an awful lot, a word she can never quite bring herself to say.

"Just, be careful, okay?"

There are winters, and then there are _winters_.

And this one is shaping up to very much be the latter of the two.

Sometimes the chill of the wind outside only makes Emma appreciate the crackling warmth of her fire more, the nights spent laughing at her parents' antics with a warm drink settled in her stomach and her cheeks. And the snow falling outside the castle windows, covering the rooftops of the town below until each building looks wrapped up and warm in a white, soft blanket – those are the kinds of winters she likes. The winding streets that wheedle themselves through their slope-side city, from the castle to the water's edge, seem softer and gentler with the warm lights flickering against snowy streets.

Emma met Killian in the winter.

It was only last winter, in a tavern on the far side of the harbour, gambling with loaded dice and swapping them for real ones every time someone accused him of cheating – at least, that's where she saw him first. He was clever about it - very, very clever about it – and Emma sat in a quiet corner, hood hanging low over her face, watching the dice slip into his sleeve when the other players became suspicious.

But it was not Emma's first time in a tavern, not her first time watching pirates lie and drunks swindle things from one another. So, she ignored it.

The winter night markets were another reason to love the season.

Produce was always low the moment the frost began to kill almost everything – fewer fruits, fewer vegetables – but those who could, still brought their wares. And in return, Emma lit the streets with little magical lights, tiny sparks that moved and darted away when children tried to touch them.

(She was their saviour after all, the one who chased away the darkness – the lights seemed like a fitting touch.)

However, it was the smell that she loved the most, it was that that usually stuck in her memory when she thought about it - the deep scent of honey-roasted almonds, the cinnamon ginger biscuits coated with cloves and sugar. It was worth untucking her hands from her warm blue cloak just to nibble on one of them.

But that very same winter, only a few nights later, she had not expected to see the cheating pirate behind a stall of jewellery, his leather clothes long gone in favour of woollen winter ones. And she would have thought nothing of it if she hadn't recognised him as he was playing pretend and sweet-talking some woman. Emma spotted him long before he spotted her, and as she drew nearer, she tried to figure out just what kind of fast one he was trying to pull this time.

"Your Highness," his bow is low, an almost convincingly innocent grin upon his face.

Emma was used to not being able to go anywhere without people recognising her - her parents were well loved, and she had been encouraged to know her people the moment she could walk and talk. (Plus, no one forgets the face of someone who overturned a dictator). Hence, walking through the markets often resulted in hearing her title called out to her over and over again – in greeting, in respect, in supplication.

But she doesn't always stop.

She does this time.

He keeps hold of the sweep of his bow until she stops in front of him. Two other men stand at the far side of the stall, so tall that their heads almost hit the red and gold awning above their shop, arms crossed haughtily around themselves in the cold. They look more like henchmen than craftsmen or collectors of fine goods.

They look far more like pirates than their accompanying merchant, that's for sure.

Emma, more curious as to the charade than anything else, browses their display – gaudy rings and ostentatious necklaces, silver and gold and all manner of colours no doubt meant to catch the eye of passers-by. Although, it was clear by the way he had buttered up his previous client, and the smooth way that he talked, that the pirate thought he was as big a draw as the jewels themselves.

"Might I interest you in this bracelet, milady, or this ring perhaps? Pure silver, mined by dwarves from the hills of the Cartolian Mountains; rubies and gemstones from far across the seas, this necklace was hand-crafted off the coast of Arendelle. And is only seven gold pieces."

Emma has to bite her tongue from laughing at the price he quotes her, so high that she has to wonder if anyone would fall for it at all. His tone is charming enough, the deep cadence of his sales pitch is certainly sure to enchant the listener into believing he has brought them from miles away. She wants to blame his foreign accent for that.

And she's not really surprised he thinks he's getting away with it – he is very, very clever about it.

Unfortunately for him, Emma knows better – even without the tingle that trickles up her spine.

 _Lie._

"So, you can vouch for the authenticity of each and every one of these items?" Emma asks, her own tone not even bothering to hide her dryness or her disbelief. She may live high behind castle walls, but she hasn't always, and she's not an idiot. And she is certainly not about to be ripped-off by a pirate.

He's not put off in the slightest by her tone.

"You have my word, Your Highness."

Emma steps a little closer to him at that, less than a metre or so between them, for no other reason than to get a better read on him and intimidate him. Not that he looks worried, smiling at her like the cat who got the cream. But at this distance she can see the cold red tips of his nose and his pointed ears, can see how completely unflustered he is.

"I'll let you in on a little secret – I'm pretty good at knowing when someone is lying to me."

He at least has the decency to look faux-affronted that someone would think he would lie to royalty.

"And why would I lie to you?"

"Probably, for the same reason you would use loaded dice."

A look of surprise sweeps across his face at that, his eyes locked instantly with hers. She expects him to flounder, to backtrack, to bluff his way out of the lie. Instead, his eyes search hers, squinting a little as though running through his memories to remember a time he might have gambled with a princess.

What she doesn't expect is the wry smirk that sneaks across his face. He almost looks impressed that she's caught him out, when indeed anyone else would begin to look over their shoulders, worried that they might get arrested or thrown in the dungeons.

(He looks more like the cat who keeps eating the cream after he's been caught red-handed just to antagonise the cook.)

The merchant persona is long gone and discarded in an instant as he saunters a little further into her space, a playful look creeping there instead, one eyebrow higher than the other.

"There are many items here, love, can you blame a man if he forgets exactly where one or two of them came from?"

Emma scoffs aloud at that, looking from him to the other two surly men who suddenly look far more panicked than their companion. She didn't expect him to be so blatantly unrepentant, but she's also not really surprised, hardly seeming the meek and cowardly type; infinitely more content to keep goading her. There's a gleam in his eyes that is more than the fire lights she has conjured – only she's not really sure what that gleam really is.

Mischief, probably.

"Let me guess, they're either stolen and you have no idea where they come from, or they're copper plated or something cheaper that will discolour five seconds after someone buys it?"

"I have no idea what you mean, Your Highness."

He does, he knows exactly what she means, it's present in the glimmer of his eyes, but he doesn't seem to care. Instead, he glances over their stall until he finds what he is looking for, picking it up in one hand and grabbing her cold right hand in the other.

"However, I fear there has been a misunderstanding, and I therefore seek your clemency." Emma doesn't even bother to hide the cynical knit on her face, even though it just makes his smile wider. He bows his head low, lingering with a kiss to the back of the hand he holds before slipping a ring onto her fourth finger. "Consider this a gesture of good will."

The ring is beautiful, really. A gentle twine of silver branches where a deep emerald is set in the centre (at least it _looks_ like silver, and it _looks_ like an emerald). It isn't gaudy, but it isn't simple and she wonders almost instantly who it previously belonged to, which ship he pillaged to get it, who he intimidated into handing it over.

She slips her hand from his a little forcefully.

"Really? You're trying to bribe my silence?"

"I wouldn't dream of it," but he punctuates his gesture with a wink.

She's only turned away from their stall for a minute at the most, intent upon informing the guards before they can swindle from less discerning citizens, and knowing she can't take all three of them on her own, but when she turns back they are long gone. Their stall empty of trinkets and tablecloths, deserted of everything and looking as though they were never there at all.

But she knows they were, the little green ring still sitting upon her finger.

Any one else caught by the princess selling stolen goods, and for an unreasonable price, would have fled the kingdom the moment they were suspected, let alone when they were caught out in the lie.

Well, anyone with a skerrick of sense.

(Anyone with enough sense to fear for their life.)

Emma sees him a few weeks later, in a different tavern, in a different part of town, laughing and drinking and gambling with two girls draped over him and his winnings. She's still not entirely sure what makes her do it, why she pulls off her hood to lean over his table. It's probably for the same reason she stopped by his stall.

(Curiosity, scepticism.)

"What are we playing?"

The sparkle in his eye almost suggests that he was hoping she'd turn up again.

"And here I would have thought your first question would be 'which set of dice are we using?'"

.

.

Remembering how she met him is not a moment she forgets easily.

(At the time it was neither a good nor a bad moment.)

She finds it stays with her more the longer she knows him - the more she comes to _actually_ know who he is - and each little part of him she uncovers makes her remember it with something new.

Months later, in the early spring, she realises with a mollifying sort of feeling, that aside from that day, he has never once lied to her. A few weeks after that she decides that the press of his lips to the back of her hand is an altogether different feeling to the touch of his lips against her own. The reckless care for his own safety (or lack thereof) – just as he didn't care that she'd caught him out that day – is entirely different to the care he takes in defending her (sometimes from herself).

Not to mention the little emerald ring that she one day, late in the heat of a muggy summer's night, slips back onto her hand that becomes something more like a token, a talisman more than a trinket.

(It becomes a good one. A good moment that started the rest of them.)

And this winter, when all the that sea brings is a cold front from the south and not him, Emma finds herself trapped in the memories of the last.

.

.

Stolen moments, unlike stolen jewellery, have this way of trickling up her spine.

They are white hot, as though when she sees him each nerve of anxiety, of _relief_ , is set alight. The fire makes it harder to breathe, scorching every inch of her and making her crave his lips against hers, bare skin upon skin.

Maybe that's the reason why one of the first things they often do when they see each other is tear off their clothes.

(Maybe they are desperate to free themselves from the confines of their clothes if they cannot free themselves from the confines of their circumstances.)

He has been gone for weeks, off on another risky idea in one of the bleakest winters she can remember. She'd call them hair-brained schemes but they're far too calculated, largely reconnaissance, largely under the radar. But he sets off to desperately fix the things that stand between them, and she stays behind to deal with other important matters.

All in all, he leaves her to watch the break walls of the harbour from her bedroom window and wonder if he will make it back before the spring.

He does.

Emma's skirts lie on the floor near the ladder, Killian's shirts and coat thrown haphazardly upon his table, narrowly missing their empty plates of food; his legs tangled with hers, her head upon his pillow.

She likes it better on his ship.

It's easier to meet under the guise of just another girl from just another tavern. She can stay there for hours with no one to disturb them, no need to panic about being overheard. Not to mention that anyone who questions her presence on board (even if they don't know _who_ she is under her cloak) gets a growl and a barked order to mind their own business from Killian.

The only problem is that his quarters are freezing. Which would generally be more of a problem if his skin wasn't flush against her own under a mountain of blankets – and if he wasn't hot, thick and hard against her thigh, his fingers curled between her legs and drawing her down from her high.

"Forgive the cliché, love, but you're a sight for sore eyes, particularly like this."

(In fact, like this, it is easy to think they don't have many problems at all.)

Emma barely hears him, her mind still trapped in the fuzzy haze of her orgasm, eyes shut firmly against the world, one hand in his hair and the other scrunched in her own. It's a blinding sort of peace buzzing in her ears (buzzing everywhere for that matter) and it takes her a moment to readjust her senses. Not that she is totally out of it, she can still feel her leg tremble a little at the way his fingers withdraw.

She hones in instead on the way Killian's lips graze aimlessly over her shoulder, back and forth, soft and warm on her skin, and then bristly when she feels his stubbled beard follow suit.

"Forgiven. Only because I'm too content right now to care."

Emma opens her eyes, and blearily blinks herself back to him. He looks content too, his features soft in the steady lamplight, even though he is still straining and hard beside her. But he does, he looks so calm and unburdened, smiling peacefully against her skin before leaning away from her shoulder to clean his fingers briefly with lips and teeth.

"Granting me clemency?"

A slow smirk creeps upon his face at his words, knowing she'll think of the memory just as he does. Emma can't help the laugh that comes out, loving that she can laugh so loudly with him here, on his ship, in the first place.

And like this, it's so easy to forget the pain ever existed at all. And not in a bad way, not in the sense that she feels tricked into something or manipulated or fooled by the pounding of her heart. Love has blinded many people.

(Love has blinded her before.)

But it serves as a reminder that the bad moments can't take this from them. The winter can't take the love he wears in his unlying eyes, can't steal the terrifying sensation of affection she feels when her hand slips from his hair to his cheek, and he bites playfully at the heel of her palm.

Emma uses that very same heel of her palm on his shoulder to push him over onto his back instead, before gracefully clambering over to straddle him, not even checking to make sure her head doesn't hit the exposed beams above his bed. Killian makes a little ' _oof_ ' sound, pretending her weight is of discomfort to him as she sits straight, his hands coming to rest on her splayed thighs.

"What are you trying to bribe me with this time?" Emma asks, shuffling back a little to trap the length of him underneath her.

She should be cold, exposed as she is with the blankets pooling somewhere behind her, but she's not. She's warm and flushed as she rocks over him, sliding over the hardness of him with where she is still wet and tingling, not even thinking about the snow that's falling on the deck of his ship.

Emma splays her legs a little wider, resting on him with more force, grinding down and feeling her heart rate pick up in turn.

She's not entirely surprised when Killian sits up, his fingers threading through her hair to pull her into a heady kiss.

He is so cheerful tonight, so playful, and she can feel it in the way that he kisses her – warm and eager. Content. Emma rises in his lap a little to kiss him harder, her tongue teasing the edge of his lip. But she's not the only one teasing as Killian nips and pulls her lips firmly into his, slowly nudging her away again with his bottom lip and the tip of his nose. When Emma reattempts to kiss him, he tilts away, forehead still to hers, and a smile growing wider in his cheeks.

She'd be more frustrated if her heart didn't skip a beat when he does it (if the way he is messing around wasn't sending tender jolts through her heart).

Emma moves instead to drag needy kisses along his jaw, the slightest touch of bristles against her tongue, holding the back of his neck with both hands so that this time he can't move away.

And then she resumes her ministrations in his lap.

Killian hums when her kisses move to his neck, feeling the vibrations tremble under her lips as he moves his hands to the small of her waist. Palms resting, thumbs brushing along her ribcage, his hands simply trying to hold her as close as they possibly can. Planting a heavy, open kiss to his pulse point, drawing a pink mark from the skin, Emma delights in the stutter of his breath as she rocks slowly and kisses deeply.

(At least, it could be his breath, it could be hers – Emma's breath is stuttering just as much, almost puffing like steam in the cold.)

She loses herself without any difficulty in the motions, her face buried in his neck, heart thrumming in her chest, the bump of him against her clit when she bucks just so – it's not enough to get either of them off, but it feels too good to stop, and for once, they're allowing themselves the luxury of time.

It all easily distracts her.

(Time. That thing that the more of it they have together, the more of it that seems to slip through their fingers. Like a history of days and minutes, weeks and months, falling like grains of sand from a shoddy hourglass before they've even turned it over. It counts without them.)

But then Killian begins to recline, his hands winding round to her back suddenly to try to pull her down with him.

Emma knows what he's trying to do.

With her hands firmly planted on his chest, she pushes him down on his back again, keeping herself sitting upright. This time, when he makes the ' _oof'_ sound, Emma chuckles.

This winter does not compare to the last.

Despite the fact that last year she did not have his body to warm up hers (it would be months until that happened), and despite the fact they're stronger and surer with one another in general, she finds it's been harder (much harder). Weirdly enough, the weather had been harsher the winter before, keeping almost all of the merchants and sailors in port, freezing the rivers and turning the sea into a bitter creature.

It kept Killian around, even though she didn't yet know she wanted him to be.

(It's how they came to meet, after all.)

This year, he comes and goes as he and the tides please, leaving every so often with words of a plant, of a poison, of a bean – the stratagem changes, the contingencies build one upon the other. Possessed by plans. All Emma knows is that each one is meant to solve their problem; each one is meant to help them get to a place where their meetings are no longer secrets.

Emma doesn't tell him (although he probably already knows), but she catalogues every detail, ready and rearing to chase after him if she needs to.

She wishes he'd let her go with him – but his answer is always no.

His answer is always fear and worry - _'he is my bloody demon to conquer, Emma'_ and ' _you can't leave your parents_ '. In truth, he is partly right - she can't really leave now, not when foreign politics and conflict demand her attention at home, not when her parents are so nervous to lose her again. More often than not his reply is ' _it is too dangerous'._ It makes her furious though, to know that if she could just show him she is right, they'd never need to think about it again.

She respects his wishes even though they are not her own.

So Emma stays. She gathers information (keeping an ear out, researching more books, questioning foreign dignitaries) and feeds it back to Killian when, at last, she sees him again.

And it's a horrible winter.

And it is all so easy to forget when he's back again, and the one thing on Emma's mind is getting as close to Killian as humanly possible.

The quiet noise he makes when she finally sinks down onto him is borderline indecent, a deep rumble she can feel under her hands as his muscles tense beneath her. Emma would laugh at the noise if she could, if the twitching of him inside her walls wasn't making her so restless, but her body isn't quite telling her what to do yet. So, she braces herself, fingertips lost in his chest hair.

"I would happily bribe you with this," Killian suggests, his jaw twitching as Emma sits there doing absolutely nothing except breathing deeply and clenching around him.

It takes her a moment to recall the initial question Killian is responding to because her pulse is running her ragged, her skin is alight, and to be honest, she'd entirely forgotten she'd said anything at all.

Emma takes a deep breath, and then another, calming herself down a bit and sliding her hands further down Killian's stomach to lean on. Her touch meets a familiar old scar just below his rib, and she thumbs it gently out of habit. Her heart is absolutely pounding, but she ignores it as best she can as she begins to move in little figure eight swivels, testing the feel of him against each side of her walls, front and back, side to side.

In between little sighs, her chuckle stuttered with her breathing, she laughs at him again.

"I can't believe you just tried to bribe me with sex."

Killian's hands skim over her sides, curving behind to cup her rear cheeks softly before holding onto her hips. His hands are so warm across her skin, soft even though they are worn with shipwork and rigging. The edges of his rings provide a muted sort of scratch as he follows her movements – the back and forth of a steady swoop – before he pulls her further down onto him, pushing himself that little bit deeper, her legs falling further apart.

Emma practically whimpers, sighing loudly once again – she doesn't know what he's done, Killian isn't entirely controlling the motion, but he is controlling the height at which she lifts herself, stopping her from rising too high, stopping her from rocking properly –

And it's absolute torture.

It has her trying to grind her thrusts a little more, increasing her frustration because he's moving less within her, but dragging in just the right place as she inches backwards and forwards. He can't be getting much out of it with no rise and fall to take him with, but the tension in her stomach has her sinking her nails a little into his chest.

She would be embarrassed by her reaction, but Killian sounds just as wrecked when he rasps back at her -

"Can you truly blame me?"

Emma can't think to verbalise her response, shaking her head a little and leaning forward a tad to find a different way to manoeuvre, to keep the drag but change the mobility.

Which is exactly what Killian wants - one of his hands threads through her hair as it cascades towards him, leaning up off the bed to kiss her.

His lips are so soft against her own, so warm and affectionate that she lets him drag her down until they are chest-to-chest against the sheets of his bed. She could happily kiss him for days, his chin nudging against hers, his knees rising in turn to thrust almost lazily, peacefully inside her. And, god, Emma feels like a mess, caught between the way his fingernails trail over her scalp, and the way he kisses back harder, and longer, and messier after she nips at his lip with her teeth.

(And it is so easy to forget like this, when everything around her is him, and everything is blissfully perfect. It is so easy to forget just how sombre it ends up being every single time.)

(Just how much it hurts in the mornings when one of them has to leave.)

And she's so far gone that she's forgotten just what she's suddenly fallen for - Killian flips her onto her back, his hair in his eyes and a bright blush to his cheeks. He grins at her in victory.

"So, when you said to me ' _lady's choice_ '…?"

He smiles softly at her question, mischievously, still breathing heavily and gliding a hand down her left side. Killian hitches one thigh up higher than the other, his fingers following the bend of her knee and the length of her calf. One heel now sits upon his lower back, and Killian readjusts himself so that he slides back into her easily.

It's a subtle sound, but he groans as he does it.

And he begins almost instantly, pushing in and dragging out at the pace that she had set, an easy tempo. And somehow he manages to magically keep that drag, that touch, she needed with the thrust he strategically stopped her from getting. She'd be madder at him for it if it didn't feel so stupidly good, if they weren't both wearing stupidly ruined expressions across their faces –

If his thrusts weren't so consistently in the right spot that she wasn't feeling her stomach muscles coiling beneath the heat of their skin.

"Sorry, love - pirate. Besides," he pauses his words to breathe deeply, his chest expanding on top of hers, hair rasping against her nipples. "You were too far away."

(Emma's heart jolts again, feeling the other meaning to his words when her brain doesn't want to listen.)

To punctuate his point, Killian bumps them forehead to forehead so he can brush his lips lazily across hers, each buck of his hips sure and unfaltering at the same time, drawing and drawing against nerves. Emma finds his cheeks with her palms, kissing him back with dragging lips, with kisses that feel more like she is trying to memorise every tiny touch, to kiss away the things that usually worry her.

(Her parents, her kingdom, her pirate.)

He shuffles a little further up his bed, the fores of his arms braced around her shoulders, his muscles taut and steady around her. The movement only shifts her hips and curves her back, the angle of his thrusts – now coming a little bit faster – are a little different.

But there's a lot in that little difference.

Emma can feel that little difference in her toes, in the way the muscles in her shins begin to tense and tremble.

"So– ah— so much for being a gentleman."

"I'm always a gentleman. Clemency?"

A giggle breaks out from her chest at the familiar plea for mercy, one that dissolves hopelessly into a gasp of breath and a whimper across his lips. Killian's hips falter a little at her breathless stumble, hips stopping and starting and his arms shaking a little at her sides. He's definitely on the edge, definitely holding back from letting go, and then he's suddenly redoubling his efforts by speeding up a little as he leaves kisses to her collarbone, his tongue hot across her skin.

Emma keeps a hand on his back, fingernails resting and making tiny grooves somewhere between his shoulder blades, each thrust and sweep of his hips against hers shaking the muscles beneath her finger tips.

And the unbearable tension in her gut begins quivering in earnest. It makes Emma arch up with no where to go but into Killian, his skin hot and sweaty just as hers is, but he just keeps pushing in and out, the swing of his pace faster and faster.

(Building her up, higher, tighter, hotter.)

(Making her forget where this will end up.)

There's a hand on her breast, thumb dragging over her nipple but moving down, over her stomach, and further down to thumb roughly shaped circles over the cluster of her nerves. She's burning up too much, there is too much heat in her cheeks as though she has caught a winter fever, as though she has actually been sick with missing him. There are too many nerves being stimulated at once that she's smothering cries into the palm of her right hand.

And here, in the chill of his ship, it's all too much.

Vaguely, she thinks, Killian is laughing at her attempts to muffle her cries, is muttering some sort of encouragement ( _"Emma"_ ), but she has no real idea. She can only feel, her heart bruising in its cage, pounding with too much of everything. He shuffles a little, rocking her from side to side, hands moving so that he can grab the hand that's covering her mouth. Killian's hands move hers to the pillow beside her head instead, each of his fingers between each of hers, two pairs of hands on either side of her head.

She doesn't last, her legs feeling tight and restless curled up against his waist, her head falling to the side to bite the hand of (what she thinks is) hers next to her. The bite of her teeth is meant to ground her, but all it does is add tautness to her jaw, add tension to her body, and make her focus in more on the tensity being drawn from inside her.

She can't see anything, Emma's eyes losing focus long before she closes them, her body suddenly overwhelmed with something white and hot that drenches her entire body head to curling toe –

And all she can do is cry out.

Until, everything is not white, but black.

Until, everything stops moving.

Emma has no intention of opening her eyes just yet, too busy feeling as though she's floating in some undisclosed location with no worries and no cares to think of. And that wonderful buzz is back again, only much, much stronger this time. She slowly begins to realise that Killian has also stopped moving, his body warm and pleasantly heavy on top of hers, his length still buried inside.

His nose is bumping soft touches to the apple of her cheek.

Both of them are panting loudly.

When she does open her eyes, she is met with his own, his eyelashes fluttering and eyelids droopy. Then he flashes a weary but toothy smile, puffing out whispered words.

"Did you just bite my finger?"

(It always starts so well…)

.

.

(…and always ends like this.)

It truly is a bleak winter, the snow growing surprisingly more foul outside the longer she stays. And the worse the weather gets, the more she argues she should stay.

Not that Killian suggests otherwise.

He makes absolutely no move to get her to leave, doesn't even hint that maybe she should head back home to where her maids are probably about to discover a very empty and very unused bed. It's hardly even discernible that it's morning outside, very little light streaming in through his windows at all, although the fact that they've frosted over may have something to do with that.

(It makes it much easier to pretend that they have no where else they should be when they can still make-believe that it's some dawn limbo.)

Emma lies draped across his torso, with her head tucked between his chest and his chin while one of his arms holds her tightly to him. There are no words for the peace she feels, his bare chest rising and falling beneath hers, much like the rhythm of the waves that nudges them quietly up and down. The quiet creak of the wooden vessel around her, the wind hissing outside - none of it seems to really touch her.

Not like this.

There may not be so much sunlight with the midst of a snow storm blustering outside, but this is how she always wanted their mornings to end up - with no one making any move to leave.

"Do you remember who you stole it from?"

His left hand is playing gently with the fingers of her right, twisting the little emerald ring that sits there. Emma has often wondered where the ring came from and whether it was worth more than the sentimental currency she attached to it. Not that it really mattered, but she was still curious.

"'Fraid not, love."

His voice doesn't sound right.

There's a sudden sadness in his tone that surprises her, so she leans back on her elbow to see his face.

Killian's brow is crinkled, some shadowed look in his eyes as he watches himself spin the ring with a slightly calloused thumb. She's never seen his mood slip so quickly overnight, from the playful man she rolled around with the night before, to the sombre one lying beneath her now. From the man who dragged sated bites across her cheek in retaliation for biting him, from teasing her until she giggled – to the loud darkness in his eyes that tells her he is far from laughter now.

Emma's free hand is within reach so she combs her fingers through his hair, curling her fingers though the longer bits that flick out from his neck. She tries to use the quiet touch to ease the tension that's crept onto his face.

When it doesn't work, she prods a little harder.

"Hey, what is it?"

Killian turns his head towards her, but his gaze does not meet her own, flickering here and then there, as though following the wooden beams of his ceiling. All matched with the clench of his jaw.

"Just an old superstition." His chest sighs deeply beneath her with the whisper of his words, all just giving him the courage to say what's on his mind. The hand resting on her back moves to cup her cheek, but Emma is not reassured by the touch - his eyes are as stormy, as harried, as the weather outside.

"Sailor's are a gullible lot, and try as I might to not give irrational things credence... Green is an ill omen. Not a single member of my crew has worn it in two hundred years and I should never have given you an emerald, Emma. Stolen moments, stolen rings... I don't want that to be all I am to you – a villain you have no future with. But it seems I have cursed myself."

Emma's heart sinks.

He has always been more stoic about their secrecy than she has, always far more concerned about what would happen if their tryst became public knowledge. She knows it weighs him down as it does her, but he rarely shows it, preferring to mask it in conviction. Killian Jones is not one for voicing the things he really feels.

Not like this, anyhow. There are things he wears on his sleeve, but this sort of thing – his perceived shortcomings – they are usually tucked beneath a smile. It's usually present instead in the way he determinedly leaves to plan and avenge, to remove the reason for their secrecy single-handedly, in the anger he fuses towards the Dark One, in the soft way his fingers travel down her arms. His love for her, that he keeps in plain sight where she can see it, but the true hatred for himself is another matter.

And his exhaustion is unmistakable now. He looks so overwhelmed with it, with not getting anywhere.

Exhausted with himself.

"That's not who you are to me, Killian," Emma whispers the words firmly. "Weren't you the one who told me emeralds are supposed to reveal truth and inspire hope? You said they're meant to secure love and loyalty."

The meaning in her words is clear: she will not accept his superstition, not over this. And he stares at her thoughtfully as a strong gust of wind whistles past his windows, mulling over her determination. However, she can tell he doesn't quite believe her, not this morning.

The first time she mentioned their future it could easily have been misconstrued for an off-hand comment, but he knew her all too well. All it took was a remark that he owed her a dance at their next ball as he spun her slowly in the dark of her bedroom; dancing with her dress swishing around his heels, her arms around his shoulders. A promise he agreed to readily, even if he was still yet to fulfil it.

 _("And what, you'll be there holding my hand and waltzing in front of hundreds of people? Not too much of an idyllic 'castle in the air' sort of picture for you?" "I'll fight for any future you'll have me in, Emma.")_

And, of course, Emma was frightened at first.

The kingdom liked to pretend that nothing ever happened, that the fifteen years of Emma's youth where she was ripped from her family, when they all lived in fear that the Evil Queen would torment every village in the kingdom for the rest of their miserable lives, was a bad dream.

Emma can't pretend.

She can't forget the people she lost, and the very, very few that came back. The way she was torn from her parents; her life and hope and world scattering like tears on young cheeks.

There's a heartache that sits in the very capillaries of her that fears that good things can be taken, that loved ones can be there one minute and not the next. She had not wanted to plan for the future, she didn't like to set her heart on anything in case it starts, the future arrives, and it lets her down.

After all, it has before.

But it's definitely not his fault that theirs hasn't yet worked out - not in any way she can really blame him.

And the moment they agreed, still swaying quietly to no music, to nothing but the crackle of her fire, it seemed silly to think they weren't going to end up here in the end. There had been a future taking root every time they met, every time they kissed (every time they stitched their hearts together in the shadows). They wanted more. Every time she dragged him into her politics and her crusades, long before they dragged one another into bed.

The moment he stopped swindling and pirating, sacrificing his vengeance to spend time with her instead, and the moment she truly began to let him and want him and need him there, they should have seen where it was all headed.

(Of course, life had a cruel irony about it, the way it seemed to circle back to his vendetta even as he'd finally seen a reason to leave it.)

Somehow, he made that future less terrifying.

And somehow, as time with him went by, the further away it seemed the more Emma was desperate to have it (to not have to keep the thing between them to just themselves).

And this morning, he's upset enough that maybe (just maybe), this time he might see reason.

She holds the hand in hers a little firmer.

"Killian, come back with me to the castle, speak to my parents. They won't care about anything except that you love me, I promise. It doesn't have to be all this sneaking in the shadows stuff and you know it."

"Emma-"

"Let Rumplestiltskin try," she's still trying to be soft, but it's clear she's pleading desperately with him, letting frustration and her own exhaustion tinge her words. She is tired of arguing the point, tired of leaving in the mornings, tired of letting it drag them both down. "I don't care what you think he'll do to me if he finds out. If my parents have taught me anything it's that we're stronger if we fight _together_ , that way we will survive."

"There are hundreds of bloody people living and working in that castle, not to mention the constant flow of diplomats, any number of them could be working for him wilfully or otherwise. All they'd have to do would be to poison your food, sneak into your chambers when you're sleeping…"

"Then we won't sit around and wait for him, we'll go after him _together_."

"Emma, I know that your magic is strong, and there's nobody I believe in more than you, but this whole bloody thing started because the man thought I stole his wife from him. He thinks I took Milah and he won't hesitate for a moment to take you from me."

"It's a risk I'm willing to take."

"And I am not. I'll risk my life for yours, love, but not the other way around. I can't lose you."

Emma pulls away from him then, sitting up without untwining their fingers, dragging the blankets around her bare shoulders at the same time. She feels the cold bitterly now that she's pulling away from the heat of Killian's body, and the chill stings all the more knowing that she's not getting through to him after all.

"How can you say that and not let me say the same thing?"

Killian goes back to avoiding her gaze as he reaches underneath the covers she's drawn around herself. His thumb begins tracing patterns on the inside edge of her forearms, of her elbow, and she knows he's trying to soothe her. It won't work though, she can already feel tears trying to trickle from her eyes.

"I just… I wish you could see that you are worth it, but it doesn't matter how many times I tell you. Killian, you have to believe it yourself."

This is why she could never quite break his wishes and just kiss him in broad daylight, accidentally get them caught with their hands all over one another in the castle corridors, just coming out and mentioning it to her parents. It was never about her, never about whether he loved her enough to come forward or fight for her. It was always about his fears, his past mistakes, and the fact that those mistakes seemed to be ever present at his heels, threatening to take the future.

It was about him.

And he is now very quiet.

Killian has nothing else to say, running a hand through his hair, an apologetic guilt welling in his kohl smeared eyes. But Emma has no intention of drawing out this argument, knowing that her words will sink in more if she leaves. She's not running away, not really, but she does get out of bed, scouring the freezing room for her clothes and mumbling -

"Then, I guess, we're back to where we started."

.

.

The book in her lap is useless.

She's read it dozens of times, scoured it for anything resembling a half-clue of the Dark One's weakness that might be lingering in the footnotes, and so Emma isn't really sure why she's reading it again in her parents' library. She could have picked anything off the shelves – _A Misthaven History of Botany, Fairies and Foothills, Soup for Beginners –_ and it would have yielded the same results.

Yielded absolutely nothing.

It's still dark and gloomy outside despite it being well past midday, and so the floor to ceiling shelves, and the warm, light décor of her mother's choosing is a pleasant contrast to the gloom outside. Only, part of her wishes this time that the room was dark in tone and not light at all, Emma preferring the room to reflect some of her own misery.

(Misery loves company.)

The book is riddled with riddles and runes, stories of gems and legends surrounding weaponry, so you'd think that there's be something in there of some use. And yet, there is nothing. Not that she's paying too much attention, and if she hadn't scoured it so exhaustively before she'd be more concerned she was missing something.

All she can think of is the ring on her finger.

Killian is wrong, she knows he is; they are not cursed. But she knows he feels trapped between a rock and an even less forgiving place (himself). She needs him to see that the green, if it truly means anything at all, means that they are evergreen: that their love is strong, and true, and can bloom through this dreadful winter they've found themselves in.

Stronger than the well of self-loathing he's found himself in. (Found is probably the wrong word, Emma knows he's been there for far longer than she's known him.)

But she barely knows how to articulate that thought to herself without sounding stupid, and flowery, and overly saccharine. It doesn't matter what the green means, it shouldn't mean anything. Nothing should matter but how they feel about each other, Emma is firm on that.

Emma just throws the book to the floor, feeling a little more satisfied with the loud thud it makes as it clatters against the leg of a table. She's not going to find any answers today, not when she's now so prickly and distracted.

"There you are, I've been looking for you all morning."

Her mother's voice is cheerful as she makes her way towards her, her shoes clicking before becoming muffled on the rugs across the room. The rustle of Snow's dress is audible in the quiet too as she flops carefully onto the edge of the light blue chaise Emma is sitting on.

"What was wrong with the book?" Snow asks with a knowing smile, not in the least chastising her for throwing a possession that is well over one hundred years old half way across the room.

"The villains won." It's far from a perfunctory answer, giving far more away than the bitter comment was really intended to.

Her mother only arches an eyebrow as she glances at the book, seeing that it's not the plot sort of book. She doesn't comment. But whatever it is Snow is not saying is painfully obvious to Emma, and she isn't in any mood to skirt around anyone, let alone her own mother.

"Just come out with it, Mum."

Snow sighs beside her, not at the blunt way that Emma speaks, but rather she is clearly warring with the best way to say whatever it is that's on her mind.

"I've been up since the crack of dawn," Snow starts, calmly and casually. "Your father has been snoring again, not that he believes me mind you. Anyway, there was a messenger bird late last night with a note telling us that the new route for the traders that you suggested ran smoothly, and there were no pirates in those waterways. But, well, when I went to see you to tell you…"

Emma's stomach churns when she finally realises where her mother is going with this. The look in her mother's eye clearly tells her that she knows Emma has realised it too, almost pausing to catalogue Emma's reaction.

"I wasn't there."

"You weren't there. I _may_ have overreacted a bit, worrying that something had happened, but here you are, safe and sound."

There is no accusation or scandalous tinge to her mother's comment, and for that she is grateful because the feeling in her chest is too tired for a chastising conversation of that nature. Especially when she's twenty-seven. Snow smiles at her gently, patiently, clearly trying to encourage her confidence.

She could lie, of course. Pretend she'd gone out early for a walk, been through the town – any number of things could explain her absence. But something in her stops her from trying to cover her tracks.

The merchant route was Killian's idea, of course, one he'd suggested to her with a map upon his desk and their fingers entwined. For someone who claims to still be worthwhile only as a pirate, he hasn't done a whole lot of actual pirating in recent months.

Not since last spring.

Snow takes her hand between the two of hers, and it is soft like her own, if a little more wrinkled, moving their joined hands to the cushion between them. The touch is calming and more painful all at once. Her mother has a habit of doing this, of making her want to divulge more than she's realistically willing, of making Emma feel younger with the need to just crawl into her mother's hug.

Emma knows they will both happen as she stares at her hand in her mother's. And at the simple act of her mother's presence, Emma feels the overwhelming need to cry, to try and let it all out, but she also feels as though she might choke on the feeling in her chest.

Choke on the restraint it's taking not to fall apart.

On the things she cannot say, and the way they dislodge unevenly in her chest.

(There are already tears welling in her eyes, and she's sure they're the same ones that started on Killian's ship that she still hasn't managed to shake.)

"So," her mother begins again, trying to prompt something from her. "Unless you've taken to sleep walking or you can also hear your father snoring from your room, I'm guessing you've met somebody?"

The encroaching tears make the puff of laughter that comes out sound funny, but she can see the relief on Snow's face that the conversation might not be as difficult to get out of her as it could have been.

Emma says nothing in reply, though, knowing the look on her face says it all - the look that shows the heartbreak, and the embarrassment at being caught spending the night elsewhere. But the silence doesn't dissuade Snow, she leans forward a bit, the green of her eyes sparkling at her reassuringly.

Her voice isn't as light as it was though, dropping to a softer and more meaningful tone.

"Emma, honey, you can confide in us. Whoever they are. If you think it's because we won't approve- "

"Oh, I know you won't approve," Emma quips under her breath, unable to refrain from commenting. There's no way that her parents haven't heard of Captain Jones, of the brutal and terrible things he's done, the bitter rivalry between him and the Dark One. Especially, as he's been docking in their city consistently over the past year. There's also no way that if her parents knew that it was he that she had fallen for that they wouldn't blanche immediately at the thought.

But the comment did not slip with the intention of making her mother feel bad and Emma quickly hurries to correct the guilty expression that has settled on her mother's brow.

"But that's not the problem."

There's a fire on the other side of the room and Emma watches it thoughtfully, trying to find a way to explain it to her without giving Killian away. Snow begins to rub a soothing pattern over her hand, over the emerald ring she knows nothing about, waiting patiently for anything at all.

"It's just that… he's made enemies, dangerous ones, and he's worried that if they found out they'd use me against him. He's worried they'll get to me."

"And you disagree?"

She turns back to her mother, sighing at the look of dismay that she sees there. It's more compassion and sympathy than any sort of disappointment in what Emma has said. Emma couldn't really say why that's what makes her start crying, why the sad, worried look from her mother breaks her.

But it does, a gasp for air she can't hold back falls from her lips with the tears that similarly slip across her cheeks. Emma has tried so hard not to cry about this, to not let it overwhelm her façade as it does the rest of her.

But she knows she's never been particularly good at not letting her emotions get to her.

One of Snow's hands comes up to sweetly cup her cheek, wiping away the tears as they fall and smiling at her sadly to continue.

"I just can't seem to make him see that he is worth the risk. That it would be easier if we did it together, we could fight back _together_. He doesn't really have anyone in his life that can convince him that he's good enough - for me, for anyone."

She hates how it sounds when it all tumbles out, the pitch of her voice, the way that she feels so small in comparison to the emotions that tower around her; she feels small for the way she lets it get the better of her. She had only let a single tear slip in front of Killian as she left him, too frustrated and disheartened for both their sakes. She'd kissed him sadly and softly goodbye instead of saying the words, and he'd tucked the hood over her head - both of them swallowing down the bittersweetness as they always seemed to do.

Their strife staining the way their lips touched with a seriousness.

But now those selfsame tears fall steadily from her eyes.

"He does, Emma, he has you. If you love him, and he loves you..." Snow pauses, briefly as though waiting to clarify that he does, that she does. She takes Emma's silence as the confirmation she was after. "He will come around. I know it's hard, and I certainly can't fault him for wanting to keep you safe, but the wait will be worth it in the end. I promise you. Love is worth it."

Normally, Emma would hate this part.

Usually, her mother's tendency towards hope and everything turning out for the best grates on her nerves, with the way it sounds so often like idle stories parents tell their children.

A false sort of hope you stop believing in when you grow up.

(When an evil witch steals you from your home but good wins out anyway.)

Weirdly enough, she doesn't mind hearing it now.

Emma shuffles towards her mother, resting a cheek on her shoulder as Snow clasps her hand tighter. And there's a strange sort of relief at letting it out, at confessing to her mother – to someone – that the things between her and Killian are real. Small silent tears may continue to fall from her eyes and onto the material of her mother's sleeve, the purple turning darker with each tear, but she does feel a little bit better.

When her mother speaks again, her tone is back to the casual one she had started with, a little high-pitched as she tries to lift Emma's heart more with a lighter comment.

"Just howdangerous _are_ his enemies?"

Emma laughs.

Confessing to her mother that she loves Killian doesn't really get them anywhere. She is still in the citadel, and he in the harbour below. And Emma knows she will go down again tonight, back down the slippery snow-covered city streets to see him again, coax Killian out into the snow if she can, or pull him into the warmth of some tavern where no one will query her guise.

Coax a smile from their eyes if she cannot talk him into anything else.

It doesn't actually get them anywhere -

But it somehow feels like a step in the right direction.


	2. Spring

Evergreen

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A/N: I was a little (read a lot) overwhelmed by the response to and the comments for the first part of this. I just honestly don't know how to thank you all enough, this fandom is ceaselessly wonderful to me. You should all treat yourselves to a stroopwafel (or 3).

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The Jolly Roger disappears from the harbour the very next day.

Killian sails out with barely a word, with nothing more than a clue from the night before as to where he might be going – and in the middle of an onslaught of snow. It's the same depth of information he usually shares – that his man in the know, the one that finds him hard to find things, knows of a place, of a person, of an object hidden in some hard to reach place.

This time it's a library. And it's not too far, it's in a not too distant valley, and the woman who works there apparently knows a thing or two that might turn Killian into the more effective hunter, rather than the hunted.

But there is truly more reluctance to leave in his eyes than normal (and that is saying something). As though the fight in Emma's own is pushing him, or pulling him – away from one idea, towards another, his heart is stuck and ripped between the two. Torn in every sense of the word.

He still left, though. Dragging his feet and his heart, fingers slipping from hers with great difficulty as snow settled in the thread of her clothes.

(Resentment towards him isn't even an emotion Emma is close to feeling, too worried that he paints himself too much the villain. Instead, simply hoping that this time he's successful, that next time he changes his mind.)

Killian doesn't specifically say that that's where he's travelling to, but it's the last thing he told her about, the latest ploy in his quest. Emma holds on to the hope that that is in fact where he has gone – a library is much safer than some of the other places he's sailed to in the past.

Even if the books there are rumoured to bite with a bit more tooth than paper cut.

There was a time, not so long ago, when he used to leave her a flower before he took off, producing it with a flourish and a grin, smiling at her lightly as she twirled it in her fingers. And it just became habit. A daisy tucked behind her ear, a rose picked brazenly from the palace gardens, a wildflower she would never know the name of.

And coming from him it somehow just seemed sincere, not an empty clichéd gesture.

But when he leaves this time it is still winter, and nothing seems to grow or flourish well enough to pick, everything too intimidated by the snow.

By the time the flowers begin to grow, he is long gone.

Spring comes and winter fades, and yet the chill does not think it is time to leave, and every flower that blooms in spite of the bite makes her bitter. And she's sure she wouldn't feel this way if the winter hadn't ruined their tradition, if they hadn't parted on such aching terms.

(The same terms as always: hearts in their mouths, fear in the pit of their stomachs.)

Emma's almost certain she would feel warmer if every bluebell that crept out of the ground wasn't making her think of all the times she took the flowers he gave her for granted—

Or back to the time he first gave her one, stomping through the woods one spring morning.

Emma remembers the smell of blossoms that were almost crisp in the air - fresh and light and so much like hope - and the way that the new shoots of green peeped out of darkened wood; tell tale signs of spring. She also remembers the way the filtering sun had been warm on her back, and the way that when she had dressed that morning, she had no idea she would be trampling uphill through the woods.

In heels.

The boots she was wearing were impractical for the climb, and while they were not the highest of heels, the incline was just that little bit harsher against her calves than she would have liked. Her dress wasn't that much better either, red linen very nearly snagging on something every time she moved.

And after every stumble she made he had laughed at her. Nothing cruel or harsh, and to be fair, it probably had more to do with the grumble of frustration she made every time.

The reason she was here with him – and regretting that decision faster by the minute – was definitely her fault. Her father was convinced that there were rats within their city walls, spies feeding information back to their enemies and the information they were somehow obtaining was harmful. Secret food stores that were magically razed to the ground, young crops left as ash, weaponry missing from their armoury, enemy infantry disguised as bandits on intended routes.

They were harmful enough that their allies had begun to grumble amongst themselves as to how the great Snow White and Prince Charming had managed to allow their kingdom to become once again so weak. The dwarven kingdom to their south were particularly bad-tempered about it, but they were old friends of her mother, and admittedly, the complaint was valid.

Only, no one had been able to figure it out.

And Emma was apparently desperate enough to ask a pirate – someone already knowledgeable in deception and duplicity – if they knew anything.

But Killian had dragged her into a side street in town that morning without warning, grinning ear-to-pointy-ear about having found just the people she was after.

And so the fact that she was unprepared for this little venture was definitely his fault.

"I can't believe I let you talk me into this."

"That makes two of us then."

"Great. Incredibly reassuring."

"Relax, Swan."

 _Swan._

He was the only person who called her that.

It was a nonsense nickname, really, one that the kingdom had assigned her when she'd been kidnapped by Regina. The stories started not long after, or so she had been told (she had no idea, she'd been locked away from the world, locked away from gossip and hearsay). The oracles and prophecies had spread about her return, triggering some parallel in an old wives' tale about ducklings and swans - something about her sparking great change and greater growth.

Like a kingdom in ruin and an ugly little duck, like the swan that was born from both.

The name still appeared etched in graffiti - if one was so inclined to look - in alleyways and tavern table tops, in the history books of her parents' library. Emma the Swan, the saviour of the people.

And yet, no one ever called her by it, not to her face. Emma heard it often enough in the taverns, whispered instead when they spoke of current threats as though praying that the word itself could keep evil from their borders. It was as though the word was what gave them hope, and that was why they used it.

Except for him.

Killian Jones let it fall casually from his lips as though it was her name, as though it was who she was, and he never seemed to falter on the word.

(As though it really was her that was going to save them all again and again; a fact that could not be sugar coated.

She wasn't sure how she felt about it.)

Killian is only a few paces ahead of her, trudging along a path that's barely a path, his long black duster swinging with every step and snagging on rogue branches. Their route resembles something akin to what an animal would have trampled in the night, and it's a wonder he knows where they're going at all. Killian does look slightly out of place walking up the hill with his sea swagger, so far from the ocean's edge. But he does not lack confidence that's for sure, ducking in an out of trees as he would be used to eluding sails and ropes and rigging.

Emma stops watching his movements when she nearly trips over an uplifted tree root.

"Easy for you to say," Emma mumbles, lunging over the mossy root with a scowl. "You at least know where we're going."

"Ye of such little faith," he tosses over his shoulder, still grinning widely, sounding brighter by the minute, clearly enjoying for some reason the uphill trudge.

"Yeah, sure, I'm the crazy one – you've just essentially lured me into the middle of the forest and no one knows we're here."

"You asked for my help, love."

"Trust me, that's what I keep reminding myself."

Emma hears him sighing from up ahead, but isn't really watching him. The footing is tricky now that they've wandered off the beaten track and into thicket and woodland; pulling herself up the strange course Killian has set them on without getting her skirts caught takes almost all of her concentration.

But her mind still wanders.

Honestly, she's less concerned about where he's leading her, and more focused on the why; on the fact that he's helping her at all.

Killian has no reason to. There is nothing Emma can think of that would explain his motives, nothing that truly gives away what it is he's hoping to get out of this. And it worries her. In the last half hour she's whittled it down to one of two vague explanations: the spies have something he wants, or Emma herself has something he wants.

Secretly spied information, a stolen object, or royal access, or any number of the things men usually want from women.

It's not that it doesn't sit right with her, but it's that it doesn't _sit_. The feeling bounces around her stomach making her endlessly on edge, as though waiting for something to happen. Emma's brain seems to loop and loop with the same curiosity, asking herself why he's even bothering to help her and why she even has enough confidence in him to ask.

All in all it makes her restless, on guard, as that fidgety feeling in her stomach.

She nearly walks into him.

Emma hadn't heard him stop, the crunch of the leaves on the ground beneath her own feet the only ones she was attuned to. There's an almost confused expression in his eyes when she looks at him, crinkled between his eyebrows, his mouth slightly open to take in little puffs of spring air.

"Try something new, darling. It's called trust."

They had been snarky and joking around only moments beforehand, but the whisper of his advice abruptly changes the mood. She's not sure how he does it, but she can't seem to look away from the commotion in his eyes, no doubt wondering why she's fighting him as stubbornly as she is when she asked for his help in the first place.

His unspoken question is similar to the one she is asking herself.

"I'm used to people not trusting you." She's a little bit dry in her reply and froward, she knows. Emma whispers it back to him, uncaring that her delivery sounds a little defensive.

She has every reason not to trust him. He's a pirate, and a thief, a cheat with loaded dice and she met him as he was trying to deceive her. And since then they have largely crossed paths when he's been caught in a fight, intimidating local merchants, hitting on her shamelessly when they find themselves in the same tavern.

(And the fact that she might just trust him is the biggest reason not to trust him of all.)

"The pirate thing? No, you're afraid to reveal yourself," Killian replies, his face not far from hers. He's not using the distance this time to seduce her, to tease or coerce her.

It's a strange sort of plea, the space between them a request for sincerity.

Emma's hands find her hips, finding a grip on the flair of her skirt in an attempt to both stand her ground and catch her breath. There is still a crinkle to his brow, still this look that shows how curious he is. She contemplates for a moment demanding to know what he's getting out of this, why he's so readily helpful in things that he has no interest in. He is a pirate, he has no sympathy or allegiance to any sort of royalty, and she—

She has wasted too much time thinking about it. She'll wait to find out if this is a trap before she questions him.

"The only thing I'm afraid of…" Emma says, unsure if she's pausing for breath or effect. "Is ruining diplomatic ties with crotchety men half my height."

Emma is about to move around him to keep marching through the trees even though she has no idea where they're headed, when Killian pulls something from out behind his back.

A small, wild, pink geranium.

"A gesture of good will," he murmurs, his voice husky, but he's no longer being as serious as he was, that mischievous twinkle back in his eyes as he twirls the flower between two fingers.

"Really?" Emma cocks her head to the side as she huffs the word, glaring at him and reluctantly taking the flower from his outstretched hand.

He's teasing her, she knows he is. The flower is his way of trying to coax her out of her shell, out from behind the wall between them and into some sort of repartee. The flower is an attempt at drawing her out of her inner dialogue while still showing he means no harm.

Not that she really believes that.

(She doesn't know _how_ to believe that.)

"Well, I noticed you weren't wearing the other one I gave you."

Emma doesn't waste a beat before replying.

"I'm not wearing stolen jewellery."

He only smiles at that, a dimpled beam that does not fade when Emma gestures for him to continue leading the way.

Emma is quite anxious to not have him standing around scrutinising her any longer, and she herself is tired of standing around scrutinising him. They have a job to do, a long uphill climb to do.

(A confused and unsettled feeling in her stomach to ignore.)

She's not sure how long it takes to get there - it feels like ages, pulling herself through and under bramble and brushwood. Although, if Killian's vivid and adventurous optimism is to be believed, it's only several more minutes, until, at last, they reach a particularly bushy ridge and Emma sees the point of their expedition.

There are a group of musicians milling around a campsite, their clothing in an almost offensive array of colours - blues and golds, oranges and purples. Or they're at least _dressed_ like musicians, but they're wearing the ridiculous getup as they're pouring over maps and weaponry, swords and quivers sprawled across almost every surface.

Emma watches as one particular man, with a hat as long as his backbone, slips a knife inside a hidden compartment in the neck of an oud.

Travelling musicians: the perfect cover for spies to help get them inside the castle walls, their instruments the clever guise for their weapons. Not to mention their base is so far away from the city streets that there is no chance that they would be accidentally discovered, far enough away so as to not be overheard making plans and trading secret intelligence.

( _"How the hell did you find them up here?" "I know a tavern wench or two with a soft spot for musicians…" "Of course you do."_ )

And it's only then, as Emma's sliding down the hill in her impractical boots to question them, with Killian muttering as he chases after her ( _'Wait, Swan! Bloody hell…')_ a borrowed sword from him at the ready in one hand—

That she realises she's still holding the small flower in the palm of her other.

.

.

Emma walks by the harbour nearly every single day, and every single day his ship is still not there.

The walks are not entirely unpleasant, watching the fishermen sitting around the ledge of the harbour, hoping against hope for a nibble on their lines. The weather is also much nicer than it was when he was last here (a warmer breeze, a busier dock), but there is still that disappointing feeling of not seeing his ship safe in the harbour.

It sinks to her stomach like a rusty anchor and never leaves.

The library was only a few days sail away.

Weeks and weeks go by and a bad thought takes seed in her mind, takes root and grows there - that maybe her urgency had pushed him too far, maybe his own had spurred him on, maybe he put himself at risk in his desperation. (He has, after all, always been more reckless with himself).

And the problem with the secrecy is that he won't send messages, nothing that could be traced, no one and no thing that could be intercepted by magic or force. And while she is used to hearing nothing, it is not usually for this long.

She doesn't hear from him, but she does hear something else: the rumour.

Emma likes going to the taverns, and it's certainly not because the drinks are better, or the company, but they provide a certain anonymity. Not that she's ever anonymous, not entirely, but she is just one more drinking face in the crowd, one more dark shadow amongst wooden décor. If she tucks a hood over her head, no one leers at her, no one approaches her, no one addresses her by her title.

It's just a break from the castle walls, a moment to forget her responsibilities, a chance to forget she has other things to worry about.

"Gruesome, it was. Blood pourin' out all over the place. Never seen anything like it in me life."

"I'm surprised you saw any of it at all, cowerin' away from a distance."

There's a great outpouring of laughter at that and a few crinkled glares over tankards as several haggard and haughty looking men shuffle around the table next to her. Their chairs scrape across the tavern floor, making themselves comfortable, as the shorter and fatter of the five pulls out a few coins and a few dice from his pockets.

Emma sits in the far corner of the Rabbit Warren, nearest the fire and furthest away from the drunks fawning over the maids at the bar. The burning wood and the smell of potato stew brewing in the back of the kitchen thankfully overpower the smell of beer that's seeped into the walls of the place. It's not the dingiest establishment, and easily not the worst place she knows, but drunkenness tends to leave the same lingering smell wherever it goes.

And the smell of soup lets Emma pretend that the smell of the beer in her hands does not have the same undertones as the floor.

The fire does not light their faces clearly enough but they're all scattered with cuts, bruises that tell her they're a little more rough and tumble than they are ship shape; pirates every last one of them.

"Laugh all ye want, I'd like t'have seen ye do be'er. The two o' them there, flingin' round magic and the like. He'll be a mighty one to quarrel with now, mark my words – more so than before."

There's a grumbling ascent of agreement between the men, as they too remove coins from their pouches, placing them on the table protectively in front of only their immediate selves. They look suddenly quite sullen, preparing for their game rather distractedly, all clearly thinking of the man in question.

"Miggins, you've met him before haven't you?"

The man Emma assumes is Miggins (as every other eye at the table turns in his direction) is easily the eldest of the few, a patchy grey attempt of a beard hanging off of his bony chin. As he takes a large gulp of his ale, he picks up the dice from the centre of the table, weighing them in his hand, and clearly not trusting the others to not load the dice.

(Definitely pirates.)

"Oh, I've met him alright," Miggins begins, his accent a little closer to home than the others. "Nearly ripped my tongue out for mentioning his proclivity towards Misthaven blondes."

Emma pulls her own mug of ale up to her lips, but does not drink. She rests it there, pressing the rim thoughtfully to her mouth as she listens in. It's not something that is unusual for Emma to overhear – fights and brawls, vendettas and violence – but there's something in the awe of their voices that she suddenly finds intriguing.

Particularly, as pirates and sailors don't usually fight with magic.

Although, she gets far more from eavesdropping than she'd bargained for.

"Mind you, the man's two-hundred years old, you've all likely met him. He's often enough around these parts."

Emma doesn't drop her drink. She doesn't fluster, she doesn't even move. Her brain is having trouble connecting the dots to what she's suddenly heard, the beat of her pulse trying to drill it into her head as it quickens.

Killian.

He's the only two-hundred year old pirate she knows of, the only one stupid enough to not back down from a fight with magic when he has none. She is shocked still, every inch of her frozen save her suddenly pounding heart. And when her brain catches up, it catches and snags on only one thing.

 _Blood pouring out all over the place._

"I've 'eard of peg leg-pirates, but not peg 'anded ones."

"You haven't heard?"

A sixth man pushes his way into their game, clattering a second round of drinks with him and making a great deal of noise as he sits. Emma nearly bites her tongue instead of telling him to be quiet, worried she'll miss the rest of whatever it is they're saying.

""Eard what?"

"The hook he's using for his hand."

"Aye, they're not calling him Captain Jones, they're calling him Captain Hook now 'n' all."

Her heart stops still in her chest.

It's definitely about Killian now.

Emma has heard rumours about him before. She's heard them all. The real ones, the fake ones, the ones where the women climb on his boat in droves, that half the ocean is littered with men who glanced at him in a way he didn't like. That he's quarrelled with gods and has stolen the sorts of magical objects you couldn't possibly believe in. She's heard things, like that he once murdered his way through an entire castle just to speak to someone locked in the tallest tower.

But there is just something about this one.

And she knows there's no reason she should believe this now, why the words of some men who have no real clue who he is should rattle her. But her mind has gone to the worst case scenario. She does believe it – and instantly - because she's already anxious, already so worried that something has happened, that to hear that it could have, that it _has_ —

Emma's not sure if she's actually breathing or still holding the one gasp of air in her lungs over and over again. But it stings, her lungs _sting_ , and now that her brain has caught up she's picturing worst case scenarios left, right, and centre.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to be so late."

This time Emma does drop the mug. She jumps in her seat as she's startled and watches as it slips through distracted fingers. The ceramic mug rolls on its side, clattering right off the table and onto the floor, half a cup of beer spilling out with it and crashing to a pile of shattered pieces on the ground.

There's a shout from the bar, a ' _hey!'_ that mocks her for what people assume is a drunken fumble, but Emma would happily let them think that. The gossiping pirates spare her a glance and a laugh to see her mouth hung open, but return to their game unfazed.

Mulan is the only confused one.

She looks surprised at having startled Emma so much, and guilty enough that she's up and out of the seat she'd only just fallen into, her old friend leaving her drink behind to head to the bar to retrieve something to clean up the mess.

Mulan is gone long enough that Emma has time to quash the feelings, to suppress them into the depths of her stomach. Not long enough to shake the distracted thoughts from her mind, to ignore the new kind of uneasiness she has itching through every limb of her, however. But she can't do anything about it, can't do anything about the feelings weighing her down.

The feelings that no one else is supposed to know about.

(The feelings that are getting harder and harder to hide.)

.

.

The news of his transformation (for lack of a better word) spreads upwards through the city with alarming efficiency. It makes its way from the harbour, up the slanted city streets to taverns, to markets and shops. It seems tailors and carpenters, bookkeepers and cobblers alike care about where the winds are carrying Captain Hook, and who he hurts when he gets there.

And so the word travels.

Through every alley, through every uneven cobble, and finally to the citadel itself, creeping with caution and elaborate gore the horror and temper of Captain Hook. The stories even creep into Emma's meeting with the war council as someone from the western isles jokes about how the pirate problem definitely seems to have diminished, no doubt because Captain Hook has chased them all away.

(If only they knew it really _was_ because of him, because of the advice and the tips he'd given Emma with his lips pressed to her temple as they stood in the shadows of his ship.)

Emma doesn't know if she finds it hard or easy to reconcile the pirate she knows (and loves) with the things she hears. That the same man who supposedly gutted a sailor with his hook for calling him One-Handed Jones is the very same that claims through a wobbly smile that he is not ticklish on the soles of his feet. That the man who would bring her flowers is the one who has been using a hook-like thorn of his own to steal from cargo ships at hook-point. She knows who he was before and that is why it's easy, but she doesn't know how to believe that that is who he is now.

The only thing of use that the rumours tell her, is that something has happened; that he is still alive.

And all she can do is sit back and wait to find out exactly what.

She hates it. There is literally no part of waiting to find out bad news that Emma likes.

Mulan, she's certain, noticed it that night, noticed her reticence and her nerves as she'd tried instead to focus on her friend's news about the security of their borders. And Emma wishes it were possible to hear her friend reassure her, to have Mulan's heart-felt logic calm her down without having to leave out the details of who she was worried about, and why. Her parents have definitely noticed her increased emotional frustration, watching her hurriedly rushing from one part of the castle to the next with short clipped sentences - from the kitchens to the cartographers, from one job to another - in her irritation to just do something (do anything useful at all).

That's all Emma can seem to do: run around, trying to exhaust herself into forgetfulness.

Her mother in particular watches her do it with knowing eyes, with a sympathetic sort of quiet in the way she rubs Emma's back as she passes behind her. She can see her parents just itching for her to say something to them, to let them in on the details.

And then an idea occurs to her, in the warmth of one afternoon, and she's mad at herself for not having thought of it earlier.

.

.

The sky is black, and the water is just as dark, an expanse of pitch before her so dense that she's not really sure where the horizon is. The lights of the town do not reach the far tip of the break wall and so there is nothing to light the sight, nothing to look at except what the stars will show her ( - the rough outline of the rocks, the white crash of sea spray around her).

But for what Emma is doing, she doesn't need sight.

Perching on a rock, the rumbling clangour of the ocean around her, the wind in her hair, and her determined heart - that's all she needs.

She knows what she wants to do, it's more a matter of how.

Magic sizzles beneath her hands as she focuses on it, a familiar and empowering sensation tingling in her fingertips - but Emma hesitates, not entirely sure what to do; unsure of what to manifest her magic as.

She'd never been taught magic.

Largely, that had a lot to do with the age at which she was taken, and the jail cells she was shuffled in and out of for years and years. She was good at breaking out of them, but Regina was just as good at throwing her back in them, and there was no opportunity there for the usual sorts of education a princess was supposed to receive.

She was still playing catch up on things such as languages, law and economics, but magic seemed to fall behind on the list of things her parents' thought she should know.

(And if she was being honest, that insecure part of herself agreed with them.)

In Emma's opinion, beating the Evil Queen, removing Regina's powers with her own had been a fluke, purely a desperate wish her heart had made. No one had been more surprised when it had happened than herself. And while the rumours and prophecies spoke of her great power, and the fact that she was able to defeat one of the most powerful sorceresses in all the lands, Emma could not say with any certainty that she knew what to do with it. While she'd dabbled with the magic since, without really knowing how to harness it she rarely used it. All she could seem to do with any confidence were meagre tricks of the light and whatever it was that her heart told her to do.

At least, Emma reckons, that is as good a place to start as any: tricks of the light, places of the heart.

The sea wisping around her is nothing short of wonderful, the salty air in her lungs doing the opposite of what salt water is supposed to do – she feels rehydrated, lighter and calmer. Even so, she cannot ignore the panic that brought her here, the thick, sluggish ache in her chest that has kept her up and about and restless for so long.

Emma cups each palm of her hand, placing one over the other, a furrow between her eyes.

All she needs to do is think of him, all she needs to focus on is that terrifying lurch in her heart at the idea that he is in pain and without a true ally, without a hand to hold, without her. Fear and hope and love begin to move within her like slow, glowing ribbons, wriggling through each vein and licking round the corners of her bones. That sizzle under her skin courses with purpose now rather than sitting in one place, dancing along every muscle and every hair of her arms, until—

The magic burst from her hands abruptly, and from the cracks between her still cupped fingers she can see light and twinkling taking place in the spaces between. When Emma opens her hands, a single swan made of glitter sits there, silver and gold, stretching its wings and stretching its neck.

It's not really what she was expecting, then again she's not really sure what was going to happen, the magic never quite working the same way twice. The bird cranes its neck to look at her expectantly as though asking for a signal as to what to do, the golden white shimmer of its aura almost the same colour as Emma's own hair.

On a shaky exhale, Emma makes another wish, another desperate thought.

 _Go, tell him to come home. Don't let anyone else see you._

The wish is only formed in her mind, a once spoken mantra to focus her power on, and the moment she does, the little swan takes flight, disappearing out into the dark, out beyond the waves —

And for once, just like to her people, a swan becomes her own little spark of hope.

.

.

Three days is all it takes. Three days, eight meetings, two sleepless nights, and a countless number of worried looks between her parents is all it takes for Emma to wonder if her message ever even reached him at all. Three days is all it takes to make her believe the magic within in her isn't so powerful after all.

She's not really sure what she thought would happen. Would the swan fly straight back to her, would it return with a message of Killian's own? Would the swan poof him magically back to the docks of her city, to the safe pillows of her bed? Should she have given it further instructions?

Three days is all it takes.

Her walks by the harbour still calm her even though his boat never seems to be docked there. The way the water laps against the stone foreshore, the commotion of people loading their vessels, the baiting banter of fisherman insulting one another's catches. She's heard of the wharfs in other cities being rough and dangerous, akin to the sort of disreputable people who come in and out through its ships unchecked, but she's always loved hers. The sound of the seagulls, the smell of the sea, the pelicans hanging suspiciously from the tallest posts they can find. There are green grocers everywhere, fruit and flowers and all manner of fresh crops being hoisted onto ships, ready for trading.

Basically, there's enough hustle and bustle going on around her that she can finally forget her own worried thoughts.

(Well, sort of.)

Despite her message niggling a bitter optimism into her chest, somehow she's come to expect that his ship is just never there. Hoping that the stories mean he's still alive and well, even if he is far.

And for some reason, that afternoon, she doesn't expect to see the Jolly Roger docked at all.

She certainly doesn't expect to see Captain Hook himself walking up the street of the foreshore.

Emma's not sure which stops first – her feet or her heart.

Her instinct is to run. Towards him, down the length of the boardwalk until he is within reach, until she can prove with the crash of him to her that he's actually there.

But she doesn't. They're supposed to be a secret.

(She hates it more with every passing moment.)

Two months he's been gone and she can feel that distance in the way she yearns to move, in the way she can't tear her eyes from him, leather coat billowing impressively behind him while a small red-capped sailor she's seen before natters beside him. He's moving towards her obliviously, face hard and unreadable, a tension in every move that he makes. He truly looks like Captain Hook.

The world is too busy to stop moving, too busy to notice the princess stopped in the middle of everything with her heart careening in her chest.

And she is so relieved to see him that it takes her a moment to notice the hook he's brandishing instead of a left hand.

Silver and curved, shining in the sunlight – and all of a sudden Emma feels sick. And it's not the sort of sick she's sure she's supposed to feel. She can see now the people that give him a wide berth, stepping around him at the sight of the curve, knowing who he must be, feeling the fear that the stories wanted them to and hoping he won't notice them (won't target them).

Emma feels sick for an entirely different reason.

The words of blood pouring out ring in her head as they always do, of the way his hand was sliced from his wrist with his own sword, of the man that she loves in pain. No, Emma is not disgusted, she is mad, she is furiously sad, a restless kind of helplessness that is so different from what she felt before. That was blind agitation from being kept from knowing the truth, and now that the truth is staring her in the face—

Emma feels sick.

By the time she manages to tear her eyes from it and the visions of him lying on the ground somewhere, flicking her eyes back to his face, Killian has noticed her. The tension in his stance does not change, but he wears a much softer expression – eyes less of a scowl, jaw less set at a right angle.

Similarly, he's stopped still.

Neither of them seem to know what to do.

There's an entire causeway of people bustling back and forth, running between them and shouting to each other and they're just stuck there staring at one another. She feels frozen in a sea of movement, her heart climbing higher towards her throat with every second that they do nothing, lurching back and forth in her chest with the waves knocking the ships beside her.

Killian looks shocked at first. As though the middle of the harbour in broad daylight in her own kingdom is the last place he'd expected to see her. He's hardly even listening to the man beside him who is asking for confirmation for something or other, before Killian's dismissing him with one hand—

With his _only_ hand.

Something else flickers onto his face, reading her thoughts as though they are his own, flickers into something that looks an awful lot like remorse.

With a scratch behind his ear, and the cock of his head in the vague direction of his ship, Killian breaks their stalemate and turns around.

Emma takes the hint, pulling her hood over her head, and disappearing down a parallel street without a second thought (without a first thought, without any thought but the one that tells her to reach him).

She's practically running, picking up her skirts and rushing through the street as best she can when there are people everywhere. No doubt they are watching her, and someone must recognise her surely. But she's past caring, her heart beating wildly out of time with her feet as Emma turns down another busy road, before coming out further along the docks—

And right in front of the Jolly Roger.

She can't see Killian anywhere but she keeps running until she's down the wharf and over the gangplank, barely paying any heed to her surroundings. The ship's crew give her a funny look when she gets there, her cloak slipping backwards off the crown of her head and she waits for a moment, expecting someone to question her, to sneer, to mutter her title.

Anything.

When none of them make a move to even speak, Emma can't help but wonder what sort of thing Killian barked at them before she got there, before making her way through them all and across the deck. They don't even question her when she opens the hatch to his quarters, clambering down the ladder and jumping the last few steps.

Sunlight is bursting in through the little windows; the room smells distantly of cinnamon that he's no doubt picked up for her at some market stall in some distant city; clothes hanging upon strings from the ceiling – Emma ignores it all.

It takes her three steps until she's throwing her arms around his shoulders.

Killian stumbles back on his heels with the force of it - one rock backwards, one rock forwards - catching her weight as she clings to the leather around his back.

Emma has never once considered that his two arms around her would not be enough. But they're suddenly not – he is still too far away, his chest not squished enough against her own, his arms not wrapped firmly enough around her back. Her hands cannot touch enough of him at once (his hair, his shoulders, his back), and her mind cannot settle on anything other than the fact that he's here, he's alive.

There is no space between them, and it is still not enough.

It doesn't seem to matter how much Emma climbs up and on his shoulders, the tips of her toes unbalanced by the rocking of the boat; it doesn't seem to matter that she clings tightly to him, with one hand hooked around his neck and her face buried in his neck, her heart still feels bereft of him. Nor does it matter that his arms inch up higher around her back, his chest swelling in deep breathes that pull tighter and tighter as they hug tighter and _tighter_.

"I got your message."

Emma's heart does lighten at that, at his words that are somehow filled with wonder. She feels amazed too, amazed that it actually worked, as his lips move to rest upon her shoulder, feeling that little bit more relieved that at least something went right.

As tightly as they are wrapped up in each other, his own arms don't wind around her as naturally as they normally would, one arm distinctly tighter than the other. And even though his face is buried into the crook of her neck, nose tickling rogue strands of her hair, it's the first sign that makes her realise something's not right.

She'd almost forgotten about his hand, again, - or his hook, rather – far too blind sighted by the fact that he was just _there._ Emma tightens her grasp in response climbing herself closer into his embrace, higher on the tips of her toes, legs resting against his.

Only one of his arms wraps tighter around her in return, and it nearly breaks her. Objectively, it is such a small thing, but it tells her so much.

She wants to ask him so many questions – ' _does it still hurt'_ , ' _why a hook?'_ , _'do you really think I care either way?_ '.

They all fall behind one another in her mind, a queue of queries that seem to think they're more important than the last, but ultimately she asks the one thing Emma has been dying to know for weeks.

"Are you okay?"

(Emma asks the question even though she's in the middle of cataloguing things that tell her he isn't.)

She can feel fingers twisting in the locks of her hair somewhere near the hood of her white cape, can feel his lungs sighing against her own in a weary sort of way. Emma leans back, a stifling feeling in her throat tightening and tightening as though she is an animal caught in a fisherman's wire, as though she has knots and rope and twine around her neck, steadying herself back on her heels desperately to see his face.

His eyes appear watery, the blue in them crisp and light in the afternoon sun. There is no sign of strain that might suggest he is holding back tears, but they still glisten with that glazed over look that people get when they haven't slept in weeks, when their pillows become rock hard reminders of things that sleep won't take with it.

(That's her second sign, the grip of his arms being the first.)

"I hope so," is all that Killian whispers back, his voice husky and raw. The gentle touch as he leans his forehead to hers is calming, straggly bits of his fringe trapping against her brow. His breath puffing against her lips, the rise and fall of his chest beneath her hands, the smell of the mixed spice soap he uses – it all eases her mind.

(He's alive, he's sort of okay, he's here.)

The tears that fall from Emma's eyes don't exactly come out of nowhere. They are relief, and happiness, despair and anger, but mostly they are that sickening feeling in her stomach, and the heavy-handed clutch of emotions that overwhelm her all at once.

Emma's not even bothering to try and stop them, each trickle slipping more easily than the last.

"Miss me?"

There's the tiniest hitch of playfulness in his cadence, but it is all wrong. Killian's words ghost across her lips, tender and sweet, and completely lacking the light-hearted follow through.

He cannot see her crying, their eyes still firmly shut, but Emma doesn't need to be able to see him to know he's definitely not okay. The small words lack the swagger they aim for, they sound as if he's simply trying to tell her he missed her. The words are lacking their usual bravado.

(The third sign.)

At any other time, his words would have warranted an eye-roll, or the happy mumble of ' _yeah, something like that'._

This time, she can't think of the right way to voice just how much she truly had.

She tells him a different way.

Emma traces the tip of her nose along the side of his, creeping back up onto her toes to kiss him.

It's far softer than she can remember their reunion kisses ever having been before – no rush, no need to tear off their clothes, no gleeful adrenalin pushing them into haste. Just the simple catch of his lips in hers, the light shift of one chase after another.

And it aches.

There is still desperation. Desperation in the soft way he sighs before recapturing her lips, desperation in the way her fingers trickle up his collar to hold him closer, to pull her nearer.

But it is soft.

Painfully so. Killian's body rocks with hers, right to left to right, so subtle that it's only just discernible from the sway of the boat. And it _aches_ – in the best way possible – churning her stomach and twisting little restless butterflies into her veins when his stubble meets her lips, when his nose braces and shifts against hers.

(A flutter that is infinitely preferable to the panic she's been living with the last few weeks.)

Killian pulls away first, his thumb finding its place in the dimple of her chin, and Emma peeks her eyes open to see his again. They are light, light blue, softer and still more watery than they should be, and Emma pulls him closer by his lapels, as if that will take the sadness from them.

Because he can fake bravado all he wants, but that exhaustion that he left with has worsened if his eyes are anything to go by.

(His eyes never lie.)

And the kiss seems to have broken any attempt he had at pretending he was okay, as though the graze of her lips against the skin of his stole his (albeit thin) veneer.

"I was already on my return when a little bird landed on my ship's wheel," Killian pauses to smile at her, but it is such a weak smile. It flickers at his lips, turning the edges of them down, until all he is left with is a frustrated and harrowed expression. "Not a day went by where I didn't think of you, Emma."

He is so earnest, so dismayed, so utterly and quietly mad as he speaks. The tears crawl down Emma's cheeks, one and then the other, feeling a certain madness of her own build inside her lungs, both of them so trapped in a winter only partially of their own making. She is so desperately in love with him – and she knows he feels the same – and suddenly all of the other things she wanted to ask him fall behind in favour of her anger.

However, the anger is not aimed at him and after a hitch in her lungs, she pulls him back down to kiss her again. This time the tears get the better of her. Emma's lips stutter against his as her breath stumbles, desperately gasping in short rasps of air.

The fingers of his right hand – his only hand, Emma reminds herself – faintly trace the line of her jaw, circling nonsense patterns that soothe her and soothe him. The pad of his thumb collides with a trickling tear, down to the corner of her mouth and wiping it away as his lips return the pressure of hers.

But Emma's right hand moves as well, down the sleeve of his left arm.

Killian's fingers stop moving.

And so does their kiss.

They do not move away. In fact, he just leans into her further, forehead to forehead, their lips hovering not too far away. Emma watches him tense through half-opened eyes and notices as his body stills, physically stopping himself from pulling back as her touch drifts down and down at a snails pace.

The brace is noticeable through his leather, it's hard and sturdy, and Emma curls the palm of her hand around it, careful to not put too much pressure on what she's sure is still a tender wound. The moment her pinkie tip meets the metal of the hook she feels Killian withdraw. All it does it make her grip the damn thing between all five of her fingers.

"I heard so many stories."

His eyes flash open, as though suddenly curious and worried about what she might mean – all he will see in her eyes is concern, and she's sure the wobble in her voice gives her away, too.

Killian licks his lips before nodding distractedly.

"My crew are very loyal. With the right… motivation they may have embellished a few things. Half of the things you heard were undoubtedly from decades ago."

Emma's hand moves back to his sleeve, watching his face for any sign of discomfort in an attempt to answer one of her other questions ( _does it still hurt_ ) as they keep talking.

"So, you didn't provoke the Dark One in a fight, and you didn't bleed out somewhere while he stole your hand?"

Her hands drift, winding their way under his coat as she searches for any more injuries, any new cuts or scars or abrasions to worry herself over. She's not usually like this, generally more of an 'it's just a scratch' sort of person, and she's well aware that Killian can handle himself against just about anything, but this time? This time there is proof that he is just as mortal as the rest of them staring her in the face.

There is proof right before her that that fear she has of losing him is very, very real.

(He flinches a tiny bit when she grazes his rib, and Emma makes a mental note to look at it later.)

"The stories do have some basis in fact. The library was a trap, unbeknownst to myself, and the librarian I'd wager by the way I questioned her afterwards. He was there on the docks when I returned, with the book I was looking for in his hands."

"And you what, just started a fight with him?"

"More like the other way around. Something about how it was high time I had a punishment to fit the crime."

Theft. The loss of his hand.

Rumplestiltskin is still treating Killian as though he swindled Milah from him as a pickpocket would a purse, as a street urchin would an apple from an unwatched cart.

Killian swallows grimly before stepping away from her, a strange look in his eyes as he does so, her hands slipping from his clothes. It's almost as though he can tell what Emma is going to begin saying before she says it, and he doesn't want to hear it.

"I should have been there."

Judging by the speed in which he responds, the way he almost snaps the words out, he definitely knew what she was going to say.

"If you had been there, that crocodile would have taken more from me than my hand." He's pacing now, his boots scuffing a little on the timber floorboards of his quarters. That tension is back, that shame that she saw on the street from a distance, he's wearing it now, distractedly pushing the hair from his face in some sort of attempt at pushing away his ill ease.

And all Emma can do is look and speak at him as though he's grown two heads.

"Tell me, when are you going to stop this one man crusade thing? Doing this alone is just going to end badly, surely you have to see that by now? I know where you're coming from, you know I do, the amount of times I've tried to shrug off other peoples' help, but -" Emma asks through a weary voice, that madness in her chest coming out harshly as she argues with him. And as angry and frustrated as she is, she can't help but silently cry through every word, tears insisting upon marring her cheeks. "Killian, I am so scared that one of these days you are going to leave, and you just won't come back and.."

Emma's words meet a quiet room, Killian having stopped from his pacing to look at her with that same old wrinkle between his eyes, staring at her a few metres away.

"Emma, I will always come back to you, haven't I proven that?"

And Emma is so used to him always hitting the mark, always knowing just how she feels about things that it feels strange that he doesn't now. His own insecurities are whispering things he should know aren't true, falsehoods and lies distorted like rumours into his ear, and it pains her to see him grapple with it, to see the bad thoughts in his head take over.

Emma never once worried that on these expeditions he would not return by choice - a strange and unusual feeling for her. Somehow she just knew to expect he would come back, that the whole reason he left in the first place was because he never wanted to leave. She supposed because earlier on, back when they were growing closer, he had stuck with her, side by side – he _had_ proven it to her.

She trusted him with everything she had.

(And along the way she learnt that that unsettled feeling in her stomach that worried her so much on their first adventure wasn't distrust. It was knowing that there was something between them.

It was not knowing what to do with that something between them.)

"That's what you think this is about?" Emma shakes her head at him incredulously. "No, I know that you will, I trust you, you _know_ that I do. I'm scared because you keep sailing off with a death wish. You're so worried about Rumplestiltskin killing me that you've apparently forgotten that I feel the exact same way about you."

Emma wipes the tears from her face frustratedly, wiping harshly at her cheeks, breathing in deeply at the same time in a vain attempt at stopping them from falling at all. She's so agitated, letting weeks and months of irritation and worry and heartache fall from her lips, fall from her eyes.

Killian looks apologetic when he moves back towards her, guilty as though taking it upon himself for putting the tears in her eyes in the first place. His hand brushes against the bare of her arm, touching the skin beneath the sleeve at her elbow, and watching the movement of his own fingers with something truly melancholy.

(She can't help but wonder if he's thinking of his stolen hand, and the way he used to touch her with both.)

"He won't kill me."

"How can you be so infuriatingly sure?" Emma huffs out in irritation.

"Because if I'm dead, he can't torture me," he whispers to her, clearly trying to placate her and calm her down. She doesn't want it to work, the thick ache in her chest wants her to fight and burst. But the look on his face is too sad, the touch of his skin against hers is too alleviating that she takes in a big, deep draw of breath instead, the air stuttering a little on the way in, taking in cinnamon and sea salt.

Killian's hand moves once more to her face, his eyes still focused on where his hand goes, his thumb moving against her chin, her cheek, the turn of her lips. He touches her in a way that gives meaning to his next words.

"If I'm dead he can't take things from me, Swan."

His lips find her forehead and Emma leans there, staring at the place where his collar bones meet his neck, watching his Adam's apple bob as he swallows the sour taste of sadness from his mouth. She needs him to give in, she needs him to see that her way of doing things isn't just reason, but that his way has hurt them both for too long.

(And the pressure of Killian trying to do it alone is killing him. It's killing her _because_ it's killing him.)

They stand there for a moment or two, the boards beneath their feet creaking against the water, the rise and fall of his chest beneath her open palms a sturdy reassurance. The ring he gave her glints in the light of the windows, that familiar dark green emerald drawing her attention. And it reminds her of past conversations, of the self-inflicted curse he thinks he's under, that they're under.

It inspires Emma to say something else, and when she speaks again, they still stay that way – his lips and his beard still nudging against her brow, her eyes making contact with his chest.

"You keep calling me Swan but you forget what it actually means. It's my job to bring back all the happy endings, to break curses, to fix this kingdom and the fate of its people. And that includes you, Killian. If you honestly think this green ring cursed us, then I can break it. We tried your way, now lets try mine."

.

.

The man just doesn't yield.

He did, after all, spend two hundred years avenging the last person he loved, and years before that doing a similar thing. So, it comes as no surprise that he does not give in where he thinks it endangers her.

Not when it concerns her life.

He is as stoic and unwavering as his loyalty, smoothly but very obviously changing the topic of conversation whenever Emma so much as looks as though she might bring it up. But she's not blind. While he doesn't surrender - continuing to stick to his cannon guns, so to speak - he does bend.

Emma's not even sure if he knows that he is.

But he does, because he promises to stay in port for a few weeks instead of going back to where he was before she messaged him; back to chasing a wild and rabid Crocodile. And prior to that, chasing down his demons had been the most important thing on his mind, determined to fix it so that he and Emma could be at peace. So that they could start their future together. He seems to be stuck in a place where he wants to admit he might be wrong, but is still too scared to risk her life.

At least, that's what she hopes is happening. She tries not to think about it really, the future to her is still this abstract concept where things still don't quite come true.

And as much as Killian doesn't yield, neither does Emma. Her disquiet makes itself known in little comments and knowing looks, but she's not about to give up on him. For while he may not know his own self-worth, she does.

Despite his inner turmoil (and hers), she is far happier that he is here.

It's not cold anymore, but not so warm that the heat of his body upon hers is uncomfortable. It certainly wasn't that that woke her. Nor was it the light breeze blowing through her gauzy curtains. Emma doesn't particularly mind being pulled from sleep when Killian is sprawled across her, bluest eyes shut against her bare skin and she can hear rain trickling softly on the leaves outside her windows.

As much as she is aware she will be tired come the morning, it's nice.

Each tiny trickle that comes in heavier than the one before it is a warning that there is even more to come, that a spring downpour is on its way.

Killian is going to get soaked on his way back to the Jolly Roger.

But, for now, his head is fast sleep upon her chest, his steady, weary breathing puffing upon the skin just above her breasts, and he will have to wake up soon, to flee before the sun rouses itself behind the clouds. Emma won't be the one to draw him from that sleep though, not when like this she can move her fingers slowly across his body uninterrupted. Her fingernails scratch along his shoulder and down to the fore of his injured arm, the backs of her fingers stuttering quietly over the skin and across dark hairs, before retracing her vague fingersteps back up to his neck.

Emma repeats the motion time and time again, each soft circle she draws with her knuckles is accompanied by the patter of raindrops outside. The world is neither kind nor unforgiving when it is so early, but there is peace to be found in it all the same.

She definitely won't wake him. Not when in sleep he is less conscious of what he does with said injured arm and curls it comfortably along the side of her torso.

Killian is more than troubled by his wound.

For a man that likes to carry himself with confidence (even when it's just her and him), he hesitates and is awkward around her in ways he never had to think about before. Particularly, when it comes down to whether he should take the brace off or leave it on, not sure how to touch her when he is so used to doing so with hands (plural).

She hates how it hurts him, how the missing piece of him seems to constantly remind him of his flaws, of things he'd much rather forget. He doesn't seem to worry about Emma's reaction to the hook itself after that first time, but that is probably due to the fact that she very quickly, and very unconsciously, found herself reaching for it and holding it as though she was simply holding his hand.

(As though there is no difference between metal and the feel of his fingers.)

And Emma has no doubt that in time he will get used to it and regain his confidence with the limb, when the pain of the cut, and the pain in his heart, is less poignant.

But at night, crawling into bed?

He is still so unsure.

In the end, Emma asks.

She asks him to trust her with it, to be vulnerable with her – to take it off.

The first time they sleep together after he gets back is not the impatient rush it so often is. It takes a week of Killian skirting around it until it comes to a head.

By that point, it's impossible not to notice his reticence.

His kisses are still the same, they still bubble that feeling to life in her chest in the same old way, but this time, when he fumbles on the laced-up front of her dress, she can see how he blames himself and not the outfit.

And Emma doesn't ask out loud.

She asks with every item of clothing she takes off – his jacket, his waistcoat, his shirt. Each and every one followed with a kiss to some part of him making sure he knows that with her it is no different, before bringing his hand to her laces so that they can untie it together.

(Emma would see symbolism in that somewhere if she looked hard enough.)

The removal of his brace, on the other hand, is a silent answer. Killian gestures it towards her, with a little nod of his head and a tight smile as he puffs for breath, the air having been kissed from his lungs. Emma gently removes it, careful not to catch it on the still tightly wound bandage around the wound.

And when Emma asks—

It tells her that he's not okay, but he's trying to be.

It also tells her that he loves her. As Emma rises and falls in his lap, sweat gathering in the creases of their skin, he drags the words like bite-marks across her neck, his arms and his hand pressing the feeling into the skin of her back.

But he also tells her aloud afterwards, in the dozy tangle of his sheets, with such seriousness that you'd think he'd never said them before.

Killian grumbles suddenly, drawing Emma out from the memory and back to the present of her room. He makes a noise from somewhere low in his throat, his bare chest rumbling against hers. When he sighs, his wounded arm tucks himself more across her body, his legs shifting in turn.

He is such a steady sleeper, rarely ever moving, that she worries she's woken him with her little touches, with the way her fingernails drift down the back of his neck and across his shoulder blades. But if she did stir him, it was not properly because he promptly stills and drifts back off.

She is _so_ much happier that he is here.

He is one less thing to worry about, one more reassuring voice in her ear that she wants to hear.

Needs to hear.

(The last war council did not go according to plan, almost every ambassador around the table suggesting that Emma put her magic to good use, because if it worked last time it was sure to work again. And she, of course, had walked away with panic swirling in her throat.)

(That is the real reason she's awake, lying in bed and worrying just before the dawn.)

Killian makes a noise again, a rumbling that this time sounds more like incoherent words than sleep. She knows he's actually awake when he begins to rub his stubbled cheek against her chest, gently tickling her skin with lazy affection. Emma doesn't bother to stop the hand that traces his skin, leaving her fingerprints into the very pores of his arm, lulling him out of sleep and into reassurance.

It's another few minutes before he shows yet more signs of life, taking deep bracing sighs and twitching his feet, but when he lifts his head from its place on her chest she knows he's not going to go back into a doze.

"How long have you been awake?" Killian looks up at her briefly after he says it, his voice soft even as it's low. But then he turns back to kiss the place in-between her breasts, right where he can probably feel her heart beneath his lips, beneath the tip of his tongue.

Despite the long drawn out nature of the kiss, and where he's chosen to place it, it is far more tender than anything else, more early morning lethargy than strategically suggestive.

"A while," Emma replies, her words easily less coated in the early hour than his.

They're getting better with mornings, Emma thinks. So often she would long for them to wake and stay in bed, to feel the heat between them in order to forget about the winter (their winter, and the seasonal one). But each and every time the morning comes, Emma has noticed they stay a little longer, they make more time for each other before they depart. The harsher the cold and the more painful the goodbye, the more they stayed in bed.

And even when it stopped being so cold, they did not change their ways.

It seemed an odd sort of pattern, but really all it meant was that the worse it got the harder they tried, each of them determined to thrive and to not let their circumstances wilt them.

(To bloom through the winter, to grow through the snow, to prove themselves perennials.)

The tip of Killian's nose brushes against her chest before he moves up the bed and onto the other side of her, pulling a pillow close to the edge of hers and resting his head there. His injured arm is gone, buried beneath the cream of the pillow, and his other arm becomes the one draped across her, pulling her towards him.

"Still thinking about the council?"

She doesn't answer, slipping one of her legs further into the tangle of his and letting her legs push him onto his back so that she can curl her hand onto his chest, and rest her cheek against the corner of his shoulder.

He seems to know she's thinking of it anyway, of that unnerving pressure to do something, to fix everyone's problems with the flick of her wrist. Only, Emma knows what would happen with that flick – absolutely nothing. No magic, no outcome, no fancy resolution. She is too unpracticed, too self-aware to do anything worthwhile.

Emma's eyes meet his with the tilt of her chin, his fingers now splaying across the bare swell of her hip. Her worry must be clear as day, even though the weather outside is not clear at all, because his own eyes, though sleepy and hazy and still not entirely open, reflect her worry back at her.

"Swan, your magic is there and you know how to access it, that's the hard part. You just need someone to show you how to use it," Killian whispers, his voice utter confidence wrapped in still soft whispers, but he adds a little of a tease to it when he speaks again. "You and I both know no one can talk you into anything you don't want to do."

Emma knows that he is right, and knows that he means well (even if it's a little bit of the pot calling the kettle stubborn), but the words to contradict him simply fall out.

"You did."

She's not trying to accuse him of anything, simply trying to prove that on occasion she has been known give in where she doesn't want to. Killian seems to understand that there is no bite to the words as she punctuates her comment by stroking his unpillowed cheek with the backs of her fingers. If anything, she hopes he realises she's ranking him alongside her love for her parents, her care for her people.

Alongside the only other people who could talk her into things.

Truthfully, she can't believe she ever agreed to his suggestion in the first place - but it had been very easy at the time.

It had been summer when it happened – the conversation that led them to this.

It had been summer the first time they slept together.

"Is there a reason we're sneaking?"

Emma's bare feet pad along the corridor, leading Killian down one way and then another, pulling him along with a hand firmly in his. She'd made him take his shoes off too, hoping for a little more stealth in his get away, and fortunately the floor had a pleasant warmth to it, even at this hour.

"You want the first time my parents find out about you to be when you're leaving my bedroom?"

"Point taken."

There's a gentle tug on her hand just as they round a corner and she suddenly finds herself crashing back into his chest, and his lips crashing into hers, his shoes slipping from his fingers to the thud of the ground.

There's not a lot of finesse in the kiss, nor the next one he immediately follows with, their noses squashing against cheeks, but the pair of them are busy smiling and so it makes it difficult.

And Emma happily complies with the interlude, suddenly caught up in kissing him, again, in pressing her hips into his, again, in having his hands wander down her hips, again. She's always liked kissing him. There always seems to be the right amount of passion simmering there beneath the soft surface, the right amount of nipping and pulling and lip against lip. But there is something to be said for kissing him when she knows what it is like to kiss him without clothes between them, when she knows how their lips bump when he sinks inside her, her legs around his hips.

(What it feels like when his kiss drifts below the already low neckline of her dress, and lower, and lower to the place between her thighs.)

Embracing the thing between them was a strange sensation for Emma. She had no idea whether it felt like falling or flying, or any number of the other things that songs and poets spoke of. And it was all so new, and yet if she was being honest with herself she'd been letting him in for months before she finally acknowledged she had been.

She wasn't even sure that the two of them sleeping together was that big of a deal, only that everything with him seemed to be. The only thing she knew with any confidence was that every tiny step – every kiss, every held hand, every brick of her wall that split from the mortar – led to something between them she did not regret.

(And it terrified her.)

Killian makes a low noise in the back of his throat, and it isn't until she hears it ricochet off the stone corridor around them that Emma remembers that here isn't the best place to be doing this, her lip catching in his teeth when she tries to pull away.

"What are you doing?" Emma hums in among the words, Killian still attempting to kiss the question from her lips.

"Any pirate worth his salt knows that distraction and a _slight_ of hand—" he times the words with the slip of his hands down to curve around her behind, lifting her up onto her toes to press her tightly to him. "—is the key to survival, love."

"You're supposed to – Killian – you're supposed to distract the guards, not me." Emma chastises even though she kisses him back when his lips land on hers, even though she rests her hands on his cheeks.

"We've not seen a guard yet, Swan, I doubt—"

But he stops when a metal jingle, the tell tale sound of chainmail on the move, echoes through from the way they just came. And it grows louder by the second as they stand there, Emma's hand over Killian's mouth, a smirk in his eyebrows.

And then they're darting, Killian's shoes back in one hand, treading around another corner and down a narrow spiral staircase.

Only, there's torchlight coming from the bottom of the stairs, fire flickering up the very cramped passage, and the jingle from before follows them from the top. It's ridiculous really, two grown adults skidding around stone floors so as not to get caught with their hands all over each other. Killian all but pushes her into another corridor that leads off the stairs but goes nowhere, a stony dead end with nothing but a window that looks out onto the palace gardens.

But they're not far enough away from the stairs to be out of sight, and so Killian pulls her against the wall least likely to be visible from the entrance, two arms bracketed around her while they wait. They wait for the heavy trudge of steps to fade, for each plod, each step, each jingle to disappear like the torchlight does in the opposite direction.

Killian's smirk turns into something more contemplative as they listen, the moon coming in through the small sliver of a window is just enough to see the way that his brow tenses. He doesn't seem panicked, or worried, especially when she is sure he could take on several of their guards at once in a swordfight and leave without a bruise.

But that look is more than just the shadow of the night on his face. The smiling man who kissed her to distraction has not quite disappeared, an ease to his cheeks that tells her she could lure him back out, but the seriousness that sweeps over him in the empty alcove of her castle makes her curious.

The guards eventually go their separate ways, the sound of metal armour long gone, and the stairs left in the dark, leaving only Emma and Killian to stand there, hands upon each other, that wrinkle still on his face.

"What would they have done if they'd seen us?"

"Honestly? I don't know. I don't think they'd know either, pirates don't usually wander around the castle with their shoes in one hand and a princess in the other," Emma replies, cocking her head with an easy smile. "Why? Hoping for something more dramatic?"

Killian shakes his head a little at her question, eyes flicking towards the doorway before turning to watch the way her hands sit against the buttons of his vest. It is as though he is waiting for the right thing to say to occur in his mind, waiting to see if he will find them in the press of her fingers.

But he looks at her before he speaks, eyes dark in the moonlight.

"Perhaps we should be sneaking, after all."

The disappointment that flickers in her heart must flicker in her eyes. And Killian must see it in the moonlight because he moves both of his palms to her cheeks, fingers curling the lobes of her ears. She doesn't want to believe the worst in him, but the doubt is needling itself in with the knowledge that he might be backing out, that he's slept with her and now he's just leaving.

And it is so easy to believe the worst, but so hard to believe that that is Killian's intention. He has been so steady, so patient, so completely understanding to every moment of Emma's hesitation. Never expecting, always willing.

So it's a slight shock to her now that he's suggested it, when she thought she'd be the one most hesitant.

Killian takes a deep inhale of breath, gaze moving from her eyes to her lips, from her lips to the edges of her face, mapping the sudden confusion she is feeling.

"It's Rumplestiltskin."

It's not really what she thought he would say, each syllable of the word spitting with such practiced venom that Emma wouldn't be surprised if he wasn't aware that he does it. That even though he's whispering so that their voices do not carry, even though he's looking at her with such gentle eyes, the centuries old hatred carries itself on his tongue.

He quickly begins to expand when Emma's eyebrows continue to knit.

"I'm afraid, love, that our dalliance might put you in the crosshairs of the quarrel I have with him. He has eyes and ears everywhere looking out for any signs of a weakness. I have no doubt he would try to use you against me." Killian visibly hesitates from continuing his thoughts, she can almost see him biting his tongue, clearly unsure whether it would be wise or foolish to continue his line of thought. He seems to abandon it. "I would never forgive myself if something happened to you."

It's amazing how quickly the disappointment disappears.

It fizzles into something with a flush in her chest instead, blooming into a busy warmth. And it isn't as though she wants to parade him past the courtiers, or is even ready to admit what the thing between them even is at this stage, but she _likes_ him, and she doesn't particularly want him going anywhere.

(She's fallen much further than she's willing to admit.)

Emma had half expected him to make excuses, to stumble into the same spiel she's sure he's told women before about it being a one time thing, about how the life of a pirate means he won't be able to stick around, ending with something about being at the tide's beck and call.

But he doesn't.

He just stands there, a slight panic in his eyes at having said so much, still waiting for her to say something, to say _anything_.

Killian waits for her to panic essentially, aware of the way the words show the depth of his affection. And Emma does feel that panic flood through her, feels the way her walls wobble, it all melds in with the warm one that pools around her heart - but she doesn't pull away from it. She finds herself drawn more to him, even if she can't quite manage to voice anything.

(Or maybe he is trying to determine whether or not she'll fight him on his suggestion, and give away just how far she's fallen for him. And if she doesn't, if she agrees, she's giving just as much away, giving away her hopes that this will continue.)

Emma's hands slide up to hold his palms against her face, his rings caught between their hands, keeping them in place on her cheeks - as she nods in agreement.

(It's an easy thing to agree to really when she can still remember the feel of his body sliding against hers, the memory of his tongue against her breasts, the sound of his steady pants in her room. And the tremor of her heart.

It's an easy thing to agree to when they're just at the beginning.)

"Just for now," he adds, and Emma doesn't comment on that. (Doesn't want to think too much about how far into the future this will go, and just as importantly, how far it won't.)

Killian steps a little more into her space, pressing her against the wall behind her until they are chest to chest (she remembers that too, what it was like skin to skin, without layers of shirts).

Emma knows the kiss is going to be a mistake the moment his lips hit hers.

It is too hungry, too gentle, an infuriating mix of the two so that when he kisses her his emotions just tumble out, one after the other. Fear, and affection, joy and something deeper that she cannot find a name for slip from his mouth to hers when his lips tilts against hers. Emma wonders if he's even aware that he's letting them, whether the ones inside her are doing something similar from the tip of her tongue.

But the awareness of what transpired earlier that night is so inherent in that tilt of his lips, in the way that her hands find their way into the grip of his clothes, melting into a that kiss becomes much more than making out in the dark shadow of the corner. Much more than sealing their understanding with the seal of their lips. It is too heavy, his lips too soft and deep against her own, and the feeling both terrifies her and excites her.

It was stupid to think that she would ever need to doubt his intentions.

But she knows the kiss is a mistake because it almost goes too far, Killian's pants tightening against her, his hands slipping over her the shirt of her bed clothes until they can touch her breasts. Reluctantly, Emma knows that if they continue on like this she'll never get him out of the castle without being seen.

Dragging her lips from his takes monumental effort, her head falling against the cool stone behind her to find her breath. Killian takes the hint, each of them trying to gasp as quietly as they can so that it does not reverberate down one corridor and up the next.

The still night is so at odds with the way that Emma's body races beneath her skin.

"So, I'm your weakness?" Emma finally says, failing not to beam up at him.

Killian puffs out a small laugh, adding a kiss to her cheek.

"In a manner of speaking." His lips linger there as he recollects his wits, his chest still rising and falling flush against hers.

( _"How else would you say it?" "A strength, Emma. You could only ever be strength."_ )

.

.

It's probably not her least favourite royal duty: listening to the pleas of their people.

Emma doesn't mind in the least that people come to ask for help in their legal squabbles, or their money problems, or to express the fear that their crops will not be enough this year to make it to the next. She resents a little that the courtiers stand around the edges of the room to gossip and watch, but she's never once minded helping out their people. Her compassion doesn't always extend so far – she couldn't care less that one man's tree hangs over the other man's fence, or that one farmer's chicken lays an egg on another's land and now no one knows who the egg belongs to.

But more often than not, it's people in desperate need of shelter, of food; it's those seeking help.

That she can do.

(And at least they never ask for her to solve their problems with magic.)

They've been sitting there for almost an hour - her mother, her father and herself - Emma becoming incredibly uncomfortable and restless in her seat when certain parts of her grow numb. The two men arguing over their unresolved chicken issues leave still squabbling and she takes a moment to hang her head in her hands.

And then, quite suddenly, the room goes quiet.

Every single courtier in the room stops their chatter. Every head turns in surprise, all of them suddenly wrapt as the next citizen walks through the doors of the long throne room, and as Emma lifts her head towards them, she instantly knows why.

As crowded as the room is, his boots scuff loudly on the floor, echoing down the length of the room and up into the exposed beams of the ceiling. She's sure he does it on purpose, Emma is positive he adds the imposing clack of his shoes to build the persona around him. Not that he needs to, the swing of his leather duster behind him does that too, his confident swagger, the shine of his hook—

Maybe it's that that shocks them all into silence, maybe it's the combination of it all.

None of them probably expected Captain Hook to walk straight into the castle.

Emma certainly didn't expect it either.

Of all the different scenarios that sprung to mind, she never thought he'd simply walk in, never thought he'd plan on doing this in front of so many people. In the quiet of some room with only her parents as witnesses, a kiss by the docks to let yet another rumour spread, sure, but not like this.

And yet, here he is, winking at a particularly flustered looking group of nobles as he passes them.

Emma's heart pounds within her chest.

He doesn't quite make it to the bottom of the steps, to the platform where Emma and her parents sit on their great big wooden chairs. Several guards come rushing in from the direction he came in before he can make it, all in various states of disarray, clearly having tried to stop him from entering, and all having failed, the cuts and bruises their evidence. They shuffle in and yet stop short as Snow lifts her hand to indicate they leave him be, her curiosity getting the better of her.

Killian doesn't even turn around to look at the guards, doesn't even draw his sword. His eyes are set on her parents now instead, stopping his swagger short and standing there, back straight, thumbs hanging off of his belt.

"What do you want, pirate?"

Her mother's voice is strong and sure. She's clearly not sure what is going on, but also doesn't seem too bothered by the fact he's beaten all of her guards to get here. Emma doesn't turn to her parents, but out of the corner of her eye she can sense their dislike of him, of his honourless kind.

But she's not worried about that.

She's more worried about Killian. She can't seem to take her eyes off of him, curiously waiting to see what he will say, curling her tenseness with the curl of her fingers, trying desperately not to bunch them in the pale green of her skirts.

Killian looks so uncomfortable, so out of place. It reads in his tone, too, in the half-interested yet confident way he finally speaks.

"I've come to ask for clemency."

Emma feels her heart keen in her chest. The thing nearly lurches her out of her seat, beating helplessly at the familiar turn of phrase. It may sound a little dismissive to everyone else's ears, but they sound far from it to her. But she knows his word choice is only meant for her anyway.

Her father is the first to respond to his request.

"And why would we do that, Hook?"

"All due respect, your majesty, but I wasn't asking you."

Emma nearly rolls her eyes because despite what he says there is absolutely no respect in his voice. She can't say she really blames him, not when he is so far out of his comfort zone, not when he has done this for her, and her parents are glaring at him like they want to put a sword to his throat. And he just had no modicum of control when it comes to authority.

But he turns to Emma to punctuate his point, and every single head in the room turns with him.

And the room is not an empty one. Nobles and guards and servants all have look towards Emma from the edges of the hall, their backs to hanging banners, their mouths still open in confusion. Their curiosity only seems to have only piqued knowing that it's the princess that he's after.

They're all watching her for her reaction, to see what she makes of the pirate that is staring her down.

She's still only looking at Killian.

There's a nervous waver in his eye, as though she might not actually accept the gesture. Because that's what it is – a gesture, a huge one. To him, she can tell, it's an admittance that he's failed, but it's not that at all to her – to Emma it is just him realising that you can't do everything alone; that he doesn't have to. They can do it together instead.

But clearly the feet that brought him here did not chase away the fear that he is still not enough.

(But they were at least steps in the right direction.)

Emma gets out of her seat, her own footsteps echoing in the hall as she walks down the stairs, reining in every last bit of nervousness she feels with everyone watching. The moment she reaches him he sinks down on one knee, his leather creaking and swishing out behind him as he crouches and bows his head reverently.

That is a gesture she wishes he hadn't made. She knows why he has, why he feels the need to show he has respect for her despite his bristly entrance, but the way he manifests it in a kneel feels wrong to her. It is another expression of his self felt inferiority.

"Really, we're doing this in front of everyone? Now?"

Emma whispers the words, with the intention that only he will hear them, but she's sure they echo across the eerily still room regardless. She's sure every one has caught them – her parents included – but it's Killian's reaction she cares about most.

"Wasn't that the whole point?" He asks in turn a little cheekily, voice as quiet as he can make it with the arch of one of his eyebrows. He still looks nervous when he glances back up at her, however Killian's face softens and seems relieved when he see the smile on her lips digging into her cheeks.

The smile is only the beginning of how Emma is feeling. Relieved and happy, a warm buzz flushing in her face as her nerves and her excitement rumble restlessly through her.

(And that bitter optimism, the one about the future - about _their_ future - fades and fizzles into anticipation, pure and simple.)

"Killian, get up."

Emma extends her hand in front of him, her palm open for him to take. She intentionally reaches for him with her right hand, the emerald ring that started this whole thing so long ago ready for him to take. While he doesn't hesitate, he takes his time, glancing at the ring deliberately before casting cautious looks around at their onlookers.

Killian's hand is warm and slightly rough when he slides his open hand into hers, and despite the steady way their hands hold, despite the way their rings clack together, he seems reluctant to actually stand.

But he does arise, sighing deeply as he does, his leather creaking in the very quiet room.

She wants to kiss him, to kiss the tension from his cheeks, to prove to him that he's making the right choice, that she _loves_ him. But perhaps doing that in a room full of already scandalised nobles isn't the best idea.

Then again, maybe it is.

The moment he is standing, the moment he looks back from the others to her, she stands on her toes, his cheeks cupped in the palms of her hands –

And Emma pulls him into a kiss.

It's unclear who is more surprised – Killian, or the rest of the room.

She wonders if he can feel how happy she is through his own nerves, if he can feel, as her thumbs draw around the pointy parts of his cheek bones, how proud she is of him because he is finally, in some way, letting go of his doubts.

And it's a chaste kiss as far as things go, (her lips gentle and simply pressed against his) but it's likely to cause a stir anyway. As his arms curl steadily about her waist and hold her to him, every other individual around them begins to whisper, and buzz, and gossip with the person standing next to them.

Not that she really blames them, it's probably the most interesting thing that's ever happened at these hearings - for them, for her parents, for Emma.

Emma's not really one for theatrics, or big over the top gestures, but she figures doing it like this gets it out in the open as quickly as possible. And distantly she can hear her mother placating her father ( _"What?" "Charming, now is not the time."_ ) and is glad that she had that conversation with her all those months ago.

A kiss is easier than telling a room of people just how much she loves him.

The noise around them only gets worse when Emma pulls back to let one hand settle on his cheek, and to let her forehead bump against his own, as though the sweet touch is more scandalous than kissing a pirate in the middle of the Great Hall. There is still so much strain on his face, and Emma knows it will take a long time for him to settle in front of these people, to feel as though he might fit in.

But he is _here_. With her.

There are no shadows to be found, no covert rendezvous, no stolen or secretive kisses. No time limit. It is a good moment that she doesn't want to believe will be followed by a bad, as his hands sit loosely at her sides, one made of metal, one of flesh.

"Thank you," Emma whispers, and this time she knows only he has heard her, so quiet is her voice.

Killian's eyes show more smile than his face, more love in the blue of his as he looks into the green of hers than his stance or his mouth. But she knows he's going to be alright when he whispers back—

"What next, Swan?"

And everything is so far from over – a dark sorcerer to defeat, a curse to prove soundly untrue, a wealth of her parents' questions to answer, a fight at their borders to win.

But that's how it ends. Not exactly at the finish, but somewhere in the middle, each one of them still lost in feeling for the other.

Just as importantly, it ends with the winter over, the chill long gone from the season, them growing closer and closer together, their hearts and hands still firmly entwined.

Not everything blooms in the winter.

Not everything is evergreen.

But some thing are.


End file.
